Heat. Heat.

Hi friends, Jean Valentino and welcome back to another episode of Jean Valentino’s Grassroots Truth Cast. Uh,

you know, we cover issues from all walks of life. Um, social, political, environmental. Um, we try to get a grasp

on what’s going on on so many levels. We have a macro level of environment where things are going on throughout our nation that affect our democracy and the future of our constitutional republic.

But I heard Tip O’Neal, a Democrat by the way, say a generation ago that all politics is local. And I would be remiss

if I didn’t introduce you to my good friend who happens to be in her third term as state representative here in the Florida Legislature. Michelle Salsman.

Hi. Thank you for coming. Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

We got a half hour to an hour. We’re going to kick the tires. We’re going to bounce folks on a few different issues.

global in nature and then some very specific right after this. Hello fellow patriots, Jean Valentino here. As we

approach our 250th anniversary, let’s celebrate the spirit that made this nation the greatest country on earth.

I’m so proud to offer you our limited edition 1776 to 2026 commemorative hats. A bold

reminder of freedom, faith, and the American dream. Whether you’re at a rally or on a golf course or just

showing your pride every day, this hat says it all. Grab yours today at genevalentino.com and let freedom ring.

Welcome back. You know, Michelle is in several committees in the House of Representatives in her third term, which

is about five and a half years now. And she will be coming to um she’ll be coming up for an August uh primary

election, I think, uh in August of 2026 where she will be in then into her fourth term, which would be eight years.

And that’s the term limit here in the United States, here in Florida. That’s right. And uh I like term limits. You do like term limits?

I love term limits. We need them everywhere.

Uhhuh. You know, you might find that to be a point of contention amongst some bureaucrats who wish they could continue

their 40 years of service amongst my peers. Even uh when I filed the bill the first time to create uh term limits against our local utility

authority, I you thought I was trying to legalize abortion. It was crazy. People, Republicans were just so mad. you can’t term limit me and this and that. And I’m

like, I thought you were a constitutional conservative, but you know, you believe that we’re here for the people and not for the power. And I

got that bill passed eventually. And then the next thing we did was term limits on schoolboard members. You’d thought once again that we were legalizing abortion or raising taxes.

People freaked out. Um, and then I passed the bill to do term limits against county commissioners, but it didn’t pass the Senate. It only passed

the House. And even through that process, we had local commissioners that swore they supported term limits. And the moment that bill was filed, oh well,

no, I really meant no, no, no, no, you can’t do this to me. And I’m just like, okay.

As as a former county commissioner for two terms myself, I can honestly tell you I was not so hot about term limits when I was in.

But let me tell you, that was one of my biggest mistakes. Had I had a chance to influence state representatives like

yourself, I would have been much more forthright in making sure we executed the state executed a statute of law to

enforce term limits, whether it’s a uh chartered government county or a home rule county. Michelle, I think the

source of many of our problems, as you know, I ran for Congress and when I did, I signed a document on term limits

saying that We needed term limits. I think the problems go away, do they not?

Well, I think it shifts the power a little bit back to the people and back to the donors. It’s hard. Basically, what happens is you build a relationship, a rapport with the people

that are in office. So, once you’ve given them money, you meet with them, you give them money, you meet with them, you give them money, you meet with them.

Eventually, you’re building a real relationship. And sometimes those relationships um create bigger relationships. like they see that

there’s an ability to get, you know, a big project that would take 10 years across the finish line. If I have you there for 10 years to vote yes, so if

there was eight-year term limits, that wouldn’t work for me. So the the longer you’re in office, the more relationships you build and a lot of times you just

lean on those. Like I I meet somebody, I see they’re an expert in something, I call them because they’re the expert when that comes down the pipeline. I

chair uh currently the housing, agriculture, and tourism committee. Um that is all of the major dollars um and

tourism. I did say that. So every major um income for Florida, that’s my committee. I chair that committee. So all of that comes through me. So imagine

if I was chair of that committee for 15, 20 years, how many developers might be able to just convince me because of that relationship and that access that

something’s a good idea as opposed to having to reinvent and reapprove yourself every eight years. So people

just get lazy. I’m not saying that everybody is, but it’s just we’re humans. It’s nature. So I think term limits just requires it requires us to

put that work into things and make us real more conscious about the decisions that we make for the people.

I think the people just want accountability and they do transparency and it’s been alleged that

term limits doesn’t necessarily allow encourage that to happen.

I would say you’re right. You hit the nail on the head the transparency component because you’re not going to if you at public records request me for text messages or emails you’re not going

to find all of that. I see that guy all the time because he’s he’s just somebody I built a relationship. We’ll go have lunch together, talk about things and,

you know, and nobody gets to see those conversations. They only see the things that they can request if they were to try to get, you know, the sunshine law

here in Florida. We can access that. But transparency, I think that’s a very valid point. That’s a good way to just put a pin on that.

State legislature recently uh had several bills you were behind. You were very busy this first half of 2026. And

what was the um one on citizenship and voter rights that the state the Florida House of Representatives uh passed had

to do with um accountability of who a citizen is and who it is not that there was a b there was an

underwriting criteria or a a a requirement that allowed a voter to vote in Florida. What happened? Well,

we’ve been re-evaluating our election laws for many years since I’ve been in the legislature for almost six years now. Um, the past, I think, three or

four years, we’ve done election bills. I did the election bill a couple of years ago. Um, and just every year we find loopholes that people are utilizing to,

you know, to buck the system and to just circumvent that this constitutional republic that you mentioned. um you know, honing down on what is an

identification card, how do you register to vote, how often you have to um you know, ask to get that mail-in ballot.

There’s a lot of things out there and we have some of the best system in the in America here in Florida. Um we we really do set the standard

because we require a lot of things. You don’t you can’t use a student ID anymore. you were able to use a student ID to register to vote um up until this

current law that we just passed. And it also requires if you’ve never proven what your name is, it requires you to do that. And I had a lot of people coming

at me, women’s rights and da da da. And I’m like, what is what what’s the woman’s right? Well, I have to supply my marriage certificate and what kind of

world is that? I said, don’t you have to do that when you buy a house? Get a mortgage.

I mean, you you this is the most in incredible power that a citizen of America has, this power to vote. And if

it is inconvenient for you to exercise that right, maybe you don’t deserve that right. I mean, tell me, you like the job?

Um, I do not.

I don’t like being in politics. I like helping people and uh so I just avoid the political banter. I just focus on um

you know the person, not the policy specifically like the the right to vote like that law. You know I had a lot of people coming after me. A lot of women

saying how can you vote for this? This is horrible. And I’m like listen stop listening to sound bites that you hear from the League of Women Voters or from

CNN or whatever and just focus on the facts. You know, do you want to protect your your constitutional right or is it just not that big of a deal to you?

Well, that begs the question, what do you think the biggest misgiving is amongst your opponents? What is it they

they’ve got wrong and don’t understand about you?

I don’t know. I think my opponents are just socialists and they’ll never agree.

Well, I mean, I I don’t believe in socialism.

Well, your your your opponents, I think, are most Americans opponents. I would hope so. Anyways, uh you know, that begs the question. We

see a lot of blue states and uh blue cities with a major migration coming to Florida, Tennessee, Texas. I can name six more. And why are they coming?

Well, they they see the freedom. They see what we have. We’re I mean we are thriving. We have no um state tax. We we have a lot of balanced budget.

Well, that is right. We balance our budget. It’s part of our constitution.

It’s the only thing we’re required to do every year is to balance our budget. And we’re really proud of that here in Florida. We do a really good job every year since I’ve been elected. We’ve

reduced taxes every single year. So, we’re going the other way. While now local governments is another conversation. You know, a lot of

counties and uh school districts and things, they’re increasing their local taxes, which we’re working on ways to

combat that, but um we recognize that lower taxes. Well, when you cut taxes from your point of view at the state

level, does it mean that the county or the county um agencies that are standing

on their own like a like a water and sewer uh utility authority, uh these entities at what I’d call the local

level, the nonstate level, uh find themselves in need of of having to increase their fees because you’re

finding ways of cutting it. Oh, that’s bologoney. Okay, that’s the biggest honk poo poo I’ve heard. First of all, the utility authorities don’t get any money from us.

They do all of that themselves and their own taxing authorities.

So, they’re not getting any supplemental um act uh sometimes they apply for special projects to the department of transportation or the water management

authorities or whatever, but those are projects like infrastructure such as like sewage treatment, things like that.

And we haven’t decreased any of the money in that. what we decrease money in basically, for example, we eliminate, we

do a tax uh break on ammo and guns. So during a certain week of the year, you don’t have to worry about paying taxes.

It’s the best time to go buy that beautiful rifle and and you know, the scope and all those little pieces, maybe stock up on ammo for hunting season.

That’s the type of stuff we don’t have tax on diapers. We don’t have tax on feminine products. We don’t have we don’t have tax on baby formula. So we

had that 5 years ago. So when we say we eliminate tax a or reduce taxes, a lot of these taxes are for things that everyday Floridaidians would go do. We

reduced sales tax in in one of our uh proposals. And so that that touches the state agencies. And what we’ve done is

we’ve evaluated how many employees each department has and we say, well, you haven’t filled this billet in five years. You clearly don’t need the money

for that. So we’re going to take that out of the budget because you’re not filling that position. So we’re not taking away from things that are being utilized currently. We’re take we’re

looking at where we have some issues that we don’t really need to be funding or maybe you know we’ve created better infrastructure in the technology

component so we don’t require all of the people on the back end. So because we can remove those people we save money.

So we’re not taking money out of local government’s hands. here. So if the state well we first of all we don’t have

an income tax for individuals and uh if I think it’s Governor Dantis is thinking

about the removal of the property tax in some degree at the local level in I’m all I love it I love the concept

that he’s going in that direction but I think the rub is especially in your agency budget and finance to me would be

we still got to balance the books. we still got to pay our bills. Um uh so if the counties remove the uh property tax

at the local levels, how much more would they be expecting from the state to supplement that?

Right? And you know, there have been a variety of estimates. You know, every organization out there has created their

own version of what it would do um to their their communities or to Florida as a whole. So I won’t speak to the details

of it. I can tell you that the Florida House passed the bill on the House floor. We passed the resolution. We did

it. The citizens of Florida said, “We want lower property taxes or we want property taxes eliminated.” And we were

the only body that acted on it. We passed that resolution in the House. Never went to the Senate.

The Senate never picked it up. And the governor has not released a plan on property tax reduction or elimination.

So because he has not given uh an idea of his own, the Senate hasn’t acted on it. But I can tell you the the Florida House passed the most extreme version.

We said we will eliminate it all together. What? Yes, we did in the House. And we did that because we wanted to make sure that we sent a message to

all Floridaians to include the cabinet, to include our, you know, the chamber across the hall, the Senate. Whatever you decide, we’re going to support. You

know, whatever anybody can agree on. If we say we’re only going to do homestead exemptions, then we’ll just eliminate property tax on your homestead. If we

say we’re only going to do 65 and over, then we will agree to that, too. So, basically, we went as far as you could go in the House, and the chamber because

we wanted to make sure people knew you guys just decide what you want to do. We’re okay with any of it.

Is the Senate um stepping back from it in any way? The Senate hasn’t really made a proposal or

agreed to do anything. The Senate’s been very silent on this conversation.

Individually, senators will comment on it, but as a body, they haven’t made a position and and they did say that they were waiting on the governor’s um

recommendations. And so, the governor hasn’t done that to this day. He might be working on it now, but we have been told that we should be doing a special session on property taxes at some point.

So, we’ll see if we’re called back to Tallahassee to do that. But as for now, as it stands, there will not be anything on the ballot because the Senate and the and the governor have not done anything.

It’s just been the Florida House.

Folks, we’re talking with Michelle Salsman, state representative, District 1 Republican, uh is running for her fourth term, and that’s the term limit in Florida. Uh four terms, eight years.

Um let me let me push the issue a little bit further. I suspect, and this is me

talking, I suspect the governor will be in a position of having in his attempt to try to eliminate property taxes

altogether. What a concept. I mean, we’re only left with one major revenue source, and that would be sales tax.

That’s right. Revenue or fee use of fee tax. Yep. Um, and if that’s the only one that remains, and we’re between 6 and a

half and 7 12% uh in most counties around the state, what does that number go to? 10%.

Yeah. So, the counties would be doing their own. And that’s part of where we ran into the big issue as we were evaluating what did we want to do in the

house. We created a special committee on property taxes. We did a lot of meetings not just with that special committee but with the members as a whole as we just

communicated with one another what the concerns were of first responders, the concerns of the local citizens, things like that. Um, we we recognize that

while we might eliminate the taxes, what in that referendum, what in that resolution that we’d be putting on the ballot would eliminate the local

government’s ability to just go in and say, “We’re just going to do a 10% flat tax in in the county, you know, or 10% tax in the city.” Or another issue that

we were looking at, they could circumvent it as a whole and just um carve out like firefighters from the police here locally. the the

firefighters are somehow encompassed into the um police budget and they could easily just rewrite their local

municipalities uh constitution or whatever their governing uh document is and say you know what no longer that and

now they’re not funding that at all. So, as you it’s not the intent of what you’re what the House of Representatives

decided on to allow individual counties to circumvent or or manipulate that flat fee if it goes to a sales and use tax. Yep.

To to bastardize the system, right? Uh in an disproportionate way. Yeah.

So, it would have to be uh prora or per pursue across the board. Yes. in all 67 counties.

That’s the thing like how do you do that? So that’s I think that’s where the issue lies as you as you want to create meaningful legislation. How do you do

that? We have such a unique state. It’s massive inside third in size. Third largest economy in America, 14th largest

in the world. Balance our budget every year. You have a county. We have 14 counties that one representative represents that has only 180,000 people

in it. And then you have one county that’ll have a million people in it. So, how do you navigate that landscape when you talk about what you can and can’t do locally as far as taxes are concerned?

So, it’s there’s a lot of intricacies there and how how do you manage that?

Which is why the House just said, “Look, we’ll just do whatever y’all decide. You guys, you know, y’all figure it out.” Because initially, we did have some

plans that were very specific, only homestead, only 65 or older, you know, this or that. And people were just nitpicking all of it. We said, “You know what? We’ll just get rid of all of it

and let y’all figure it out.” Yeah. Yeah. What I find interesting is that there is a um transition going on

on so many levels. Uh I’m going to stay on your accomplishments for a minute uh with you in the House of

Representatives. Then I like to pivot some other uh good points to talk about before we’re done. Uh you also put up

term limits for a water sewer district here in it. I was going to say Escambia County. It’s the region. Yeah, I did.

Uh, and um, how do you maintain friends when you when you’re cutting their ability?

Well, you know, there’s a couple that haven’t talked to me since. U, but, you know, I didn’t run to make friends. I ran to represent people, and I know that over

80% of my constituents, over 80% of Fidians, and over 80% of Americans want term limits on all constitutional properties. That is absolutely true.

They just want it. And it’s not my job to mansplain to my my people that I was elected to represent what they want or don’t want or why they need something.

It’s my job to do what they tell me to do. And that’s not hard. If you just listen to the people, do what the people say. It doesn’t matter who is your

friend or who you upset because I didn’t go there to make friends. I went there to be effective. I need to be an effective lawmaker for the people. And I

have delivered results resoundingly year after year. And it yeah, I was looking I was looking at the bills. You’re on at

least 25 bills since the first of the year that you either sponsored or co-sponsored and um some of them are

rather interesting. The one that stands out though uh is the voter rights voters rights act. Uh we had a constitutional

the Supreme Court of the United States vote on the constitutionality of u what was going on in uh Virginia. And uh it’s

amazing to see. And now then Louisiana and um uh the redistricting concept

is uh to me a one man, one woman, one vote. Uh what’s the problem? Democrats,

I don’t see where that’s all they wanted to do. Do you sense that the Democrats in the Florida state legislature that the door is swinging back the other way?

I on this issue. Yeah, that they weren’t too hot about talking about before and now they want to jump on.

It’s interesting because I was a part of the redistricting. It’s reortionment is what it’s called by the constitution.

And that’s the second thing. There’s only two things that we’re constitutionally required to do as state lawmakers, house and senate. Balance the

budget every year and every 10 years, you know, follow the census and re-evaluate by the districts. I was a part of the redistricting congressional

redistricting committee last time and um I remember very clearly when we were doing the maps the Democrats were like

these maps suck and I was new to the legislature gerrymandering and blah blah blah blah blah. I’m like you want to talk about that? I’m the only district

in Florida that has a Supreme Court required minority district. We have a minority district required by the

Florida Supreme Court in county commission and in school board. And so that is gerrymandering. That is, you know, that’s not representative.

Well, that was legislation from the bench.

Yes. It was when a court order Michelle, I’m so glad to hear you bring it up. I don’t think too many people realize it. You can’t

say it often. I commend you for bringing it up, but you’re talking about a district, the five districts in Escambia County.

Is this the only district that this has occurred in?

The only one in Florida. And we are, we are so unique. We had a bill a few years ago and Bla1 Golia, now the CFO, good

friend of mine, he was in the house um and it was going to do something to us and one of the county commissioners called and said, “We got to fix this.

This isn’t us.” And so I called Blae and I said, “Bla, we got to fix it.” He said, “Michelle, I already fixed it.” And I called him. I said, he said, “He already fixed it.” And he said, “No, we

don’t apply. We have” And so then he explains it to me. I had no idea specialized districts. So that means that all of the the law that we pass for

county commission in any capacity, we have to have a special mention if we want to be affiliated because of the way that we district just in Escambia.

Just in Escambia County out of 67 counties in the state of Florida, we are the only one like that.

Well, how did it break off and become unique?

Um because we had the Supreme Court ruling a long time ago that said that we have to have a seat that represents minorities. Yeah, if I recall, it was a McMillan.

That’s right.

The McMillan case. And um look, none of us want racism or unjust

practices in in the right to access, the right to free speech, the right to use, and the right to vote. And what I think

you’re talking about is that in Escambia County, the court said there will be one district for minorities. Yeah.

Well, when I was commissioner, I had minorities in my district. What? So, they don’t qualify. I think they’re

disadvantaged because they’re not in the minority district.

I mean, you know, that the argument a long time ago was they all lived in one spot. This was a long time ago and you

know, everybody’s moved around every you know, everything’s different now and that that ruling still stands. and we thought that we were going to be able to get a really solid ruling from the

recent ruling, but it turns out it did not include that specific chapter that the Supreme Court ruled on. So, we will maintain that minority district here in

Escambia County. But the um the Democrats, they just they were just just I I really was like, are we doing something wrong? Like, do you think

maybe we’re not being nice? Cuz that they were just so adamant that we weren’t it’s going to be challenged and overturned. And the governor’s like, “We

got this. It won’t.” And sure enough, we didn’t have a single issue with our state or our congressional maps at all.

Not one issue whenever because they challenged all of them. So, I have faith that what we did this past session a couple weeks ago will stand through the

Supreme Court. I don’t think it’s going to have an issue at all. We’ve worked really hard to create good maps um that that are indicative of the population.

population, fairness between uh when I was a commissioner, I remember having to I was directed by the county attorney to

look at two things. Make sure the population was Perry pursue equal amongst the different and so the line

and the borders moved to make sure that each of the five districts had the same number of people.

Right? The second issue which was not talked about as much was an attempt to

if if you had 70% Republican registration and uh 20% Democrat and 10%

more was unaffiliated that you would attempt to um move the

district into the same ratio as the county. So that is that is unconstitutional.

So, you can’t draw lines based off a party. You can draw lines based off of county lines, city lines, uh tax

brackets, uh maybe major highways or how you get to and from like if you have two communities that are separated by a

major lake, you know, and there’s a bridge and you know that they’re the same community, like I live here, but I work here, I work, but I live here. We

need to try to include them in whatever that district is. So um it there are a lot of things that we look at geography

base is the main thing how how it would just make sense when we were doing the state maps. I was requested, you know, my own input because that was uh one of

the things we were doing and they asked me and I said I would prefer my district stay as close to the same as possible if you pull because there were some maps

that had me pulling in the city or had me going to the coastline and you don’t want to mix the district with different

tax um revenues or sources if you don’t have to. The the coastline has a different taxing. The city has their own taxing. They have their own government.

They have another mayor. It’s a whole thing. So, if I could avoid that, then I was keeping a a really good clean map for my constituents. I want to represent as as like-minded as possible.

Possible. Yeah. Now, and just for clarification, uh so Michelle is state representative in district one for state

uh legislature, but that includes two counties of the panhandle.

I only have Santa Escambia County. Santa Rosa was that it did change. It did change. Uh before me, it was Santa Rosa

and Escambia. and then it changed to Escambia. That was another um option.

Somebody said just go back to Santa Rosa and Escambia and grab the top end of the state and then you’ll have all the same people that won’t give you any trouble. Well, it’s population based.

It is. And and it would be But my issue was you’d be splitting the counties. And I really felt like we needed to keep it as cleancut as possible. Although the

population in the north end of the panhandle, they’re all similar. They’re all farmers, right? So, I just have all farmers. And I thought that was good,

but I really didn’t feel like that was appropriate because it would make the district so long, which would mean I would require additional staff and it would cost the state more money to

manage that office. So, I just felt like it would be best not to increase the cost to maintain the government when I can just keep the map similar in my I’m

district number one. Now, when you get down to district, you know, 30 through 80, they’re like all mixed in together.

You move one street over and you’ve got issues, especially in Miami. But for me it was really just keep me here because I’m the first one. I start the map. I’m

like just leave my mine alone and y’all just work your way down the state. But um what’s your hot hot accomplishment? What

makes you happy when you talk about what you did this week or this month?

I think the most important thing is just focusing on what the constituents want.

We have an affordability crisis in the in the whole world right now. The war in Iran is real. It’s creating a real problem for everybody. Yet we still have

some of the lowest gas prices in the world even though the gas is high for us, right? Um so focusing on that, I

have requested that we do a temporary gas tax relief uh from the state. Um that is going to be in the tax package request that’s coming up tomorrow. We we

gave in and we’ll start focusing on that. Anything to eliminate or reduce costs for my constituents, I’ve been advocating for and I’m really proud of

that advocacy because I see that it’s making progress. You know, maintaining that safety and the infrastructure component. The basics of government are

so important. People want to get off on these tangents and talk about all these crazy things, but at the end of the day, can you afford the bread? Can you get

across the street? I mean, your road was blocked on the way here. I’m like, what is happening? Why am I sitting here? And it’s four years overdue.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So, so focusing on that, I’m I’m really th those are hot topics. You know, we we always hit the big stuff in in uh session. We’ve

already hit, like you said, we fixed some more in the voting stuff. So, now you have to prove that your last name is your last name. Nothing wrong with that.

Can’t use all these madeup ID cards from all over the place. It needs to be a stateisssued ID from a state office,

which is a reasonable expectation. So, do you see the Democrats getting, you know, we we the citizens who watch from

home what’s on the news and what’s hot and what’s not? And I get a sense of

vitriol on the Democrat side unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Said differently, Michelle, I don’t see it

from the Republicans. Oh, there’s some weward Republicans. We don’t have a perfect party either. But I’m just saying that it seems that the level of

hate and discont disc discontent on the Democrat side has transcended to action

or I would say actionable words like assassination attempts.

Oh, it’s mindblowing. And then they tell each other that it’s fake. And then you see at the state level?

No. Uh at the state level it’s different. Um I have a lot of colleagues that I would rather not ever have to lay eyes on. Uh because I don’t I really I

just feel like there you know anybody anybody that supports um Palestine or you know there’s a there there’s some

stuff you know I’m I am a Southern Baptist that is first I wake up I’m God first right so if you don’t support my

God we’re done here like just keep walking so does our constitution you know and they forget that because there’s a whole movement to bring

socialism and communism and stuff and they’re like this is going to be great and then you talk about but what about let me show you what happened in Cuba let me oh but that’s not our country

because we don’t allow it I really feel like what happened in the information age is a lot of people that can’t think for themselves now they have access to all of these things and they think that

that’s real because they don’t have true problem solving skills or they don’t understand how to think for themselves so they believe those things to be true

so perfect segue on education the under 16 crowd the genzers Yeah,

I’m not sure they understand what the Constitution is or have even been trained in the Declaration of Independence,

the Gettysburg Address, uh the Federalist Papers, and the Constitution itself. What is it with the

educational system that you fund are partially involved in funding at this state that that is that is remiss

in teaching the youth before they even get to high school, right? A civics class, a social studies class. Sure. To include those items.

We already did it. I’ll tell you what we did. About five years ago, we got in the legislature six years agoish. Uh about five years ago, we had real

conversation. We went around the state really focused on what in the world are we doing wrong? How does nobody know the preamble to the constitution? How how does nobody understand what the

Gettsburg address is or that we have three branches of government or I mean any of that stuff. And we realized that

through the years they had been oh people know that so they just started removing it from their curriculum across the state across the nation but in our

state specifically. And so what we decided to do was we mandated civics’s education, but we went a step further and the legislature created that um

education. We created all of the rubric that’s required and the testing that’s required. We we have told them what they

need to know. So I as a lawmaker and the one that co-sponsored that bill go around the state and I meet with little kids and we have these little civics

books that we give out for free. the legislature provides them and we teach them who’s the governor, what branch of government does this, how am I elected,

what year do you elect people, what’s the constitution, what’s the basis of your rights, what’s a responsibility. We do that now. Now, this is new. It’s like

three years in the running, but it is something we identified as a key problem. Another thing that we identified that we mandated was

financial literacy because you have a lot of debt. You know, you have a lot of people that don’t know how to spend money. So now they’re also required back

to the basics. I mean these are things that were being taught and then just kind of faded out into the night or

teachers, socialists or people that didn’t agree with America but were still here teaching were teaching their own

version of civics. Right? So then now you’ve got kids that are confused. So by creating not only the requirement of

teaching these things but also exactly what you have to teach them and how that is going to control this narrative. So I

think our younger younger will be good but maybe not the ones in between continuing and I get you. We have a gap now coming through the high school system. Well,

but but the younger folks like you just mentioned, is there not a penalty that you can impose through an act of law, statute of

law, in addition to the criteria you just described that says to the teacher, I don’t care what

union you’re in, you cannot go out on a limb and be teaching uh stuff outside this scope.

We Yeah, they get terminated.

Said differently, socialistic or Marxist. Socialism is illegal in Florida. You are not We made that illegal two years ago. You are not allowed to teach that socialism is good.

I thought you you were silent on your accomplishments. And look at look at what she’s talking. Folks, we’re with Michelle Salsman, District 1. Now,

here’s a good example. When I get to hear you talk about all these great things you’ve done, I’m not sure I like that term limit anymore. I don’t want to

I don’t want to see you leaving in two years. my words. I mean, people that are good maybe need a way to stay in

government to make things happen. People who abuse the system, milk it. I think the answer is find your good replacement once you turn out, right?

And then also, if you are that good, then there’ll be something else for you to do.

There’s a way that you can continue your impact, whether it be Senate or Congress or, you know, just fill in the blank.

There’s so many other opportunities out there. So, since you brought it up, um, thought about governor?

Uh, not governor. I I have been mentioned in the lieutenant governor list, but not governor itself. You know, I think that’s way beyond my my thought.

Yeah, let’s get through another good term.

100%. But we we did make socialism illegal. We we’ve done a lot in in the state of Florida over the past 5 years.

Just leaps and bounds. I mean, when I got elected, it was legal to have an abortion. Now, it’s not. When I got elected, you couldn’t have a gun on campus. Now you can. When I got elected,

you couldn’t um you you had to pay taxes on your guns. When I got elected, when you bought ammo and firearms, you were

put in a database. I don’t even know if citizens knew that was happening because the credit card companies were putting us in databases. Three or four years

ago, illegal. Now they can’t put Floridaians in databases. They’ll have to do it in other states. So, there’s a lot of things that we’ve accomplished that, you know, things that you were

like, “Is that really happening?” There’s no way that’s happening. Yeah.

What about teaching kids that it was okay to be a boy if you’re a girl in kindergarten? Who would have thought that was actually happening? They were

doing that in South Florida in Central Florida.

Tampons in men’s bathrooms 100%. So, we mayal just waltz up in uh Minnesota.

No, there are some there, you know, we have uh we have Democrats all over, but um but we fixed it. So, now it’s illegal. It’s against the law. you will

lose your license to teach if you do any of those things that we’ve talked about.

So, we’re working on it, you know, one step at a time. What um is your biggest disappointment?

Oh, wow.

You’ve been in three for five and a half years and you’ve you’ve seen a shift. You’ve seen a transition in the um complexion. Yeah.

Of the House of Representatives. I I think my biggest disappointment is the fact that we as Republicans in the state of Florida, which we lead the nation. We

know that. We know that when we do something, everybody’s watching. And I serve on the executive board for the Republican Party of Florida. I’m a delegate for the president. I have a lot

of responsibility external to just being the lawmaker. So, I have access to a lot of information. I do a lot of stuff for the party as a whole, good friends with

the chair, Joe Gruters. Um, but my point is years ago when we were looking at the landscape, the political landscape of

Florida and we were a purple state and we said we want to swing at red, we worked really hard to do that and we still work very hard to continue that momentum. But one thing that that

happens when you do that is you become so big a supermajority that you start eating your own. And we said for years, we’re not going to be like those

Democrats and do all that eating our own. Like they’re they’re the reason they were their own demise cuz they start eating each other up. And then look at what’s happening in the governor

race right now. I mean, Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins is a very good friend of mine. And he’s out there with this millionpage thing against Byron

Donald’s just to smear his name so people know about him. And the problem is things like that aren’t going to hurt the primary. Byron’s going to win by a

landslide. Mark my words. I’m telling you. And when Byron wins by a landslide, now the Democrats are going to have that

information to use against him and the general. So when we fight each other publicly, when we go after each other publicly and say, “You’re not this or

look what you did or whatever,” we’re not hurting each other per se, we’re hurting the party as a whole. And the mission of the party is to stay unified.

The mission of the party is to march in the same direction. And and we don’t do that when we get too many.

Not be denied. your right for self-expression and to elicit your own opinion, right?

Uh you you can deliberate or collaborate with each other with differences of opinion. That doesn’t mean you’re out for each other’s throats,

right? Exactly. And there’s a lot of that happening across the the state, not necessarily across the nation.

Yeah. And and in the state, I use the governor’s race only because everybody can relate to that. If you if you live in Massachusetts, you’ve probably seen

some of the infighting between the governor um candidates here in Florida.

But that happens at every level. It starts at the Republican executive committees, those tiny little meetings in every county and the little clubs, the Republican clubs and the Liberty

Caucus and, you know, the um John Burch Society and the Tea Party and you know, all the different types of conservatives

that we are, the MAGA movement, you know. So, how do you how do you navigate that where you’re not attacking one another in a way that’s so visceral that

that it gives the Democrats ammunition and we become weak ourselves? If we spend so much money on a primary, then

we can’t focus on what really matters and it’s the general. A Republican should be a Republican. You know, whether you believe, you know, this or

that, you should fall in that line of a constitutional conservative, you would think, right? I remember the days I date myself where the guy by the name of

Ronald Reagan had a visitor at his bedside after he had been an attempted assassination

and his name was Tip O’Neal, speaker of the House of Representatives of the United States Congress. Tip O’Neal, a

strong Democrat, and Ronald Reagan, a strong Republican, were good buddies.

They’d have a scotch together. They’d bits over issues and chat things, but they never

they they had dis they had gentlemanly fights on the issues, but it never became so hostile,

right? And it is that’s I see Chuck Schumer, Hakee Jeff, formerly Maxine Waters and Nancy Pelosi, the squad coming up the ranks with AOC.

Yep. And I could name 10 more. Look what Adam Schiff and Eric Swallwell have been caught doing. Look at the mess with the

um conspiracy uh uh on the Hunter Biden laptop.

51 of those folks, including John Brennan, head of the CIA, and James Clapper, NSA,

signing a document saying it was legitimate that in fact Donald Trump was conspiring against America with the Russians.

And it all proved not to be true.

Crazy, isn’t it? Political warfare. It’s political warfare.

Do you see anything going that far at the state level? I do see stuff like that happening. Yes, I do. I do.

Can you Here’s the real challenge. We’re running out of time. Do you see um a

mechanism by which a legislator can pass legislation to punish a legislator for wrongdoing which is so vile, which is actionable?

Yeah. When people threaten to take other people’s life, do you need do you need to move a mountain? Uh I mean, how many

times in our lifetime are we going to see a Donald Trump?

Well, for us in the legislature, I mean, my life was threatened a couple of years ago. The governor gave me his detail. I was riding in three of those black SUVs.

you’d have to you didn’t know which one I was in and they were all fully loaded with tons of ARs and shotguns ready to go and all of that because I stuck I

stood strong for Israel and I had a lady in the chamber who was she was pro Palestine and she believed Israel wasn’t

real or legitimate and they needed to go and so she does this video it goes viral and then now my life is on the line like literally I couldn’t leave my home for

weeks and um there was no recourse so in in our state the constitution ution guides all of our legislature as well,

all of our branches of government, just like every state. And the only way to change real action would be a constitutional amendment, you know, at the state level.

At the state level. Yeah. And all of those things require to go on the ballot, whether it be by referendum or by um the legislature, you know, joint

resolution in the legislature. And so that has come up a lot of times. We did recently this year we passed legislation in that voting thing uh the bill that

you keep referring to uh in there. So once once it gets enacted I don’t know if it’ll start this year but now if you are a gubanatorial candidate you will

get the security of the governor because we’ve had threats against our ginatorial candidates as well as the governor himself. So we’re trying we can there are some things that we can manipulate.

The speaker of the house holds a lot of power. Like whenever I had the death threats against me, it was started by another house member. It was all her

fault. And they could all tie it right back to her, but it was not a crime. Was she charged?

Um, no. Because it wasn’t a crime. And FDLE was like, I wish I could charge her. And Interpol was like, we can’t charge her.

Excuse me. You mean saying something actionable that affects that threatens another person’s life is not a crime.

Correct. Because you have to have it’s like a chain of evidence. It’s the same thing. You have to be able to say that what she said, you can actually show

that that’s what led to the death threats at my house or the pipe bombs being threat all the different things.

And because it’s so convoluted in the dark web and all that, there was no way to talk. We did get a couple of people went to prison for it. We had some

felony charges and and New York and others. So, some people went to prison, but we all know that it started from that representative Angie Nixon who was

good friends with uh Elon or whatever that her. They’re actually very close.

She did a fundraiser with Omar. As soon as she publicized my thing and I was under lockdown, they did a fundraiser together, you know, excited because they

they silenced the Israel pro-Israel person in Pensacola, which they didn’t silence me. They just, you know, this

was this was like two weeks before Marco Rubio made the statements in the hallway where he was like, you know, they all should die. That’s what I said. I said, they all should die. And she spun my

words into into other things. But um anyway, you have taken on um if you want to know

who a good politician is, he he or she is the person that’s catching the angst

of the other side. Yeah. and is probably being uh torn apart after hours.

Michelle Salsman, in addition to being a good friend of mine, has been uh very very successful in her three years,

three terms of office going for her fourth term now. And I must say, I’m pleasantly surprised at how much you’ve

done. I’ve read all the stuff on you, but I haven’t connected all the dots. I didn’t realize just how influential you

were with certain things. And to make the point, I I if you and the governor

are able to uh create an economic plan that creates incentives and jobs for

this county, excuse me, for this state that offsets the removal of the tax.

Mhm. Because the elimination of the property tax means the other source of revenue has got to be more sales and

more use of things if that’s the source of our revenue. Right.

Is going to be to me one of the biggest accomplishments in this nation.

Yes. Well, that’s why Rhonda Santis wanted it. That’s why he went when he found out we were doing the sales tax thing, he was like sales tax, y’all need

to do property tax. Then he started talking about it and then people were like, “Ooh.” And then he’s like, “Oh, wait. They want that?” Okay, let’s talk about it. So then he goes to all the

counties in Florida and he says, “Do you want to remove property taxes?” So he gets this whole uproar. He knew it and he went on the news many times and he

said, “We will be the first state in America.” And you know, so he knew that that was part of his platform. He saw

that it was just so exciting and that people were hungry for that and he did.

I mean, he does what the people want. He goes into office based off of the platform and he acts on that platform.

He is very much one of those people. He doesn’t he doesn’t falter from that. If this is what you elected him to do, that’s what he does. And he gets mad

when other people are elected to do it and they don’t want to do it too. Hence some of the infighting that happened.

Well, infighting even within the party is not a dirty word. You’re what you’re doing is what the our forefathers

intended. You’re scrubbing the issue to ensure we come to the right decision 100%. The Democrats don’t, right?

Get in line. Follow the marching orders from former head Pelosi and vote this way. Yep.

Your bill, your bill’s on hold. You’re going to handle what we tell you in in Congress first.

It’s interesting because most of the time they don’t even know what’s in the bills.

Like she said that just vote it in and then we’ll look at it later.

Yeah. They don’t even know what they’re supporting. Yeah.

They have no idea what they’re supporting. And meanwhile, we’re over here busting our tails trying to make sure that we provide meaningful impact because we know that Floridaians and

Americans, whether it’s at the national or state level, we know that we need to do certain things. We have gotten out of control as a nation is spending is

concerned, government size is concerned, we’ve lost our way. We need to focus on safety, supporting law enforcement, supporting firefighters, all the basic

things. Education, school choice. I mean, school choice wasn’t a thing until I got in office. It was allowed. We

created in Byron Donald’s era when he was in the legislature, he was the one that created the ability. So, if your school district wanted to do school

choice, they could. So, he gave them permission. Whereas, we a few years ago mandated that everyone not only had permission, but had access to do that.

And then the next year, we said, “And now we’re going to give you the money for it.” So now when you move your child out of a public school and you want to homeschool them or you want to send them

to a private school, you get the money that that child was supposed to.

You’re talking about a rebate off the tax bill we’re paying on. Yes.

For for education, pay student allocation. So every student costs around $15,000 a year to educate.

If you pull your kid out of public school and you send them anywhere else, you get the check. Money follows the student. Period. First state in the

nation to do it. It’s super great. It’s what? So basically, including charter school, 100% wherever you send them. Homeschool.

Absolutely. You can get the check yourself. That was two years ago. We said, you know what? Homeschoolers got left out. Let’s get the money to the parent.

Folks, we’re with Michelle Salsman. As informed as I think I am on many topics, I’ve been focusing with news banks and

other national outlets on the national issues. Michelle’s a refresher and a a reminder of some of the things that are

going on. All all politics is local. In fact, the the source of our good government is local. That’s right.

And you have given me so much encouragement today on the pivot that’s going on at the state level. Oh,

Florida’s just fine. Oh, no. I’m listening to four or five different things you’ve brought up in this last hour that are uh I think um u unprecedented.

Yes, they are actually.

They really are. We just passed also was my bill again um the safety bill, the school safety act which said that all higher level education systems in the

state of Florida now you’re allowed to have um uh guardians which means we’ll have guns on campuses. That was a big push but also reunification plans. Uh

how do you response uh how do you respond to a shooter or a bomb threat or whatever? when we had that issue at FSU

a couple of years ago, um we or a little over a year ago, uh it it said we said, “Wait a minute, this has happened again.

We’ve got to fix this.” So, I looked all over the United States and not a single state in the nation had a uh statewide plan. What do we do to keep our faculty

and our staff and our children safe on their university systems? And school shooters know universities are very vulnerable. Um, so now we’re requiring

locks on doors and perimeters and it it’s a lot in that bill. It’s like 80 pages. But the point is nothing like it in the nation. That’s something else

that’s unprecedented. But a lot of the stuff that we’ve done in Florida has never been done across the nation before. That’s why I said we know that everybody’s watching us when we do

things, which is another reason why we’re so calculated and how we get it done.

It’s amazing how much has changed. And uh I I’m in I’m I’m never I cease to be

amazed with the number of uh blue states and the exits of people coming out of blue states and blue cities and blue

states that are um making their way to Tennessee, Florida, Texas and I named three or four more all sb

southern states. I see a transformation going on. The problem is what they did to themselves up there, which Donald

Trump tried to help them with and they scoffed at his his offer for help, including ICE right now. The way That’s nice now.

It’s nice. Nice.

It’s nice now. I thought that was such a good I was like, “Oh, that’s funny.” Ice Ice is nice. National nice. Ice is nice. I saw that.

I was like, and they even changed the logo and everything. They’re so fast.

It’s also pretty nice to have you with me today. Oh, it’s nice to be here, Keith.

Michelle has been a true advocate of the issues. You know, there’s an old saying, uh, don’t tell me what I want to hear, tell me what I need to know.

Yeah.

And that’s Michelle Salsman. She’s That’s the difference between a politician and a true statesman. Uh, she’s telling us what we need to hear.

Uh, not what we need to hear, but she is telling us what we need to know. and I’m very anxious to see her uh in her fourth

and uh last term as a state representative. And if you had a crystal ball, do you have any plans after that?

Uh Senate, you’d like to look at Senate?

If if I am still in the legislature in six months, um Senate will probably be my plan. If I’m not, then I will be on to other things.

Well, you’ve certainly been open and transparent about that, too. And I think that’s healthy. a lot of politicians would hold off and not disclose. Uh

you’ve been pretty open about these this path and I think the people like it.

They know what they can expect and I think that’s everything. Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve had uh a three-term

soon to be fourthterm state representative to district 1 uh in the panhandle of Florida to the House of Representatives of the state of Florida.

Michelle Salsman here with us today and we thank you for joining us in the last 60 seconds. Any final thoughts or

comments or insight? Oh, contact information, website and phone number.

Sure. If you have any questions or concerns, you can reach out to me directly. My cell phone number is 8502075024.

Yes, that’s my cell phone number. I put it on all my mailers. It’s always out there. I’d rather voters or people ask me directly than go to somebody else and

get an answer that’s not appropriate. Or if you want to look up some of the accomplishments, you can go to votesman.com.

That’s s an votesman.com.

I have all of my bills that I’ve co-sponsored, sponsored, all the money that I brought back, ways to contact me, and if you want to give to the campaign, you can give there as well.

And I really appreciate personally what you’re talk what you um spoke about in the beginning of the show regarding uh

the the elimination of the specialized district in Escambia County.

If we can get rid of that, that is a perfect example of legislating from the bench, which is absolutely illegal. And

um uh doing so would allow every voter in the county to feel they’re on uh the the same playing field.

Yes.

Get some atlarge districts going. Let’s go.

That’s right. That’s right. Thank you for joining us here today. Absolutely.

Thank you. It’s always a pleasure to have you and thank you for joining us here on another episode of Gene Valentino’s Grassroots Truth Cast. See you soon.

Heat.

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