Billy Corben (1:21)

We have a democracy, not a monarchy.

Billy Corben (1:24)

Didn't want to run. That's why I ended up running. I didn't want me to run. Prayers been for God to lead me to where he wants me to go.

Billy Corben (1:34)

If he wanted me to truly have been the mayor of Miami, I would.

Billy Corben (1:39)

Have been in the run, up a distant fourth. That is how Joe Carollo performed barely double digits 11.47% of the vote. That's 4,275 votes out of 37,261 cast in the Miami mayor's race this week. It is a well deserved, sad, pathetic fart of an ending for the 400 year long career in Miami politics of Joe Corollo, the youngest commissioner ever elected to the city of Miami in 1979 when I was 11 year 1 year old. And we are now sitting shiva, pouring a little out, lighting orisha candles for Joe Carollo's political career. I feel like the last chapter of which we have documented like throughout the entirety of this podcast. Fernanda Mondi from Nixon Amani is joining us now. Political consultant, pollster. These numbers are kind of wild. In the runoff is in first place, not surprisingly, is Eileen Higgins with 35.9, about 36% of the vote in a runoff with Emilio Gonzalez, the former city manager who sued successfully to reinstate this election. When the city of Miami, Francis Suarez, Mayor Ponzi Postalita and the commission tried to gift themselves all an extra year in office and postpone the election till next year, he got about 19 and a half percent of the vote. So now they'll proceed to a December 9th runoff against each other because they need to get. Someone needs to get a majority of the votes over 50%. Right. In order to, in order to become the next mayor. But something happened really nationwide, a bit of a blue wave that usually I say Florida is immune to the sanity and reason and trends of the rest of the country and the, and the national mood and electorate. But the state of play very much went blue this week in the United States and apparently Miami is in the United States. Breaking news here.

Billy Corben (3:54)

Well, Billy, no doubt the United States is still part of Miami and Miami I think, is still part of the United States. And that blue wave did crest last night. If you look at just the mayor's results. And you know, what was the most amazing thing about last night, Billy, in the city of Miami, we were, I think, what it was about six or seven hundred votes away from it being two Democratic candidates of, you know, you might call gringo candidates, gringos and gringos in the city of Miami, which is been dominated by not just Republican but Hispanic politicians over the years. So I thought that that was one of the most astounding things.

Billy Corben (4:29)

You're talking about Ken Russell, the former commissioner, who came in a pretty tight third with 17.57% of the vote, not 7, 800 votes behind Emilio Gonzalez. And these are nonpartisan races, to be fair. There's no R&D's next to the candidates names. But partisanship has very become very much a part of all of and this polarization, a part of everyday life in America, even in these municipal nonpartisan races. But I guess what you're saying is over the course of the day, the Democratic turnout, especially on election day, which is notoriously dwarfed by Republican turnout. Election day these days is now the last day of voting is really what it is, right? Because voting is going on by mail and in early voting for many weeks, even a month prior to that. But what happened in Miami, I mean, are people just so disaffected with the federal government that they want to just have some say or influence on their local and state races? And so they're just turning out.

Billy Corben (5:26)

Well, I think that's the takeaway. I mean, unfortunately, there were no exit polls done in the city of Miami, so we could definitively say what was the cause, what was the motivation. But I think you look at the results, Billy, and they speak for themselves. The Democrats won every aspect of the vote. They won mail ballots, they won early voting. They won election day and one election day by over 5,000 votes, which recently in the recent past is the day that Republicans really turned out. So clearly they were motivated to come out. And I think the good news about last night's results, I think in both Eileen Higgins for sure, and also Emilio Gonzalez, they don't really share ideological, what you might call viewpoints, but both of them are serious people. I think that they are going to be drama free people, at least when it comes to their conduct, and is certainly what we've been accustomed to in the telenovela, which was the city of Miami, political scenes over the last few years. So I think there is a little bit of a return to normalcy in both of these candidates. And now the runoff will decide what direction the city goes in.

Billy Corben (6:28)

Francis Suarez, of course, term limited. He's done. His father, Xavier Suarez, who was the mayor decades ago, did not get 5% of the vote, just over 1800 votes in this race. Diaz La Portilla did not break. Oh, no, he did. He broke 5%. He's at 5.16% with 1922 votes. This was really in many ways a repudiation of the Miami mafia. It was a, a rejection by, by Miami voters of the dynastic political crime families that have been holding us hostage for, I mean, decades and decades and decades. It was, you look at these results and they are shockingly just, I guess like you often, you look at the results of an election in Miami or Florida and you go, what the hell happened here? Why, why is it that we vote this way? Why can't we have nice things? But you look at this and like you said in Eileen Higgins and Emilio Gonzalez, like, that's a very reasonable runoff election between two, yes, diametrically opposed, arguably ideological viewpoints, but serious, reasonable people. And then you look at the repudiation of Suarez Diaz, La Portia Hijo, Deputa Carollo. And let's talk about this, though. I mean, I am holding in my hands a playing cards, deck of Joe Carollo mailers. And if they just go on and on and they look like, if you remember the movie David Fincher 7, they look like John Doe's diaries because Everything you learn about how to run a campaign and do mailers is like, you know, keep it concise, keep it neat, keep it organized, you know, keep it pithy. Bullet points, you know, simple messaging. These are just like rants and raves. Just like we hear from Joe on the deus. Here's my question. What was Joe up to here? Was he just trying to milk the money out of his pack knowing that this was like a last hurrah and this was just a way to get the money flowing because there's no other. He shook a bunch of people down, got like $2 million in donations in, in this pack and now him and his wife just kind of, oh, we're going to do mailers, we're going to buy ads, we get vigs or commissions or what. What really happened here?

Billy Corben (8:39)

Billy, we were both taught not to speak ill of the dead. Oh, maybe in this case there's a caveat because it's the political dead. But look, here is what happened. I mean, first off, the. Your opening bit was, was on point, on brand and hysterical and also true, this is the end of Joe Corollo's political career, which, you know, in a way I feel a little bit wistful about. You may be as well. We won't have Joe Corollo who has dominated the scene politically for our entire lifetimes. You were 1 years old. I was just turned 4 years old when he had been elected. I turned 50 this year. You'll be there soon enough. So to think that this kind of colossus of the Miami political scene is gone makes me a little vermpt in a lot of different ways. But look, I didn't understand the strategy while at the same time I did understand. I think what Joe was trying to do was in his frantic, Corolla esque way, be and do what he does on the de, try and overwhelm and pontificate and with the monologue of mail pieces and geez, how many did you have? Did you have a.15? It felt like you had 15.

Billy Corben (9:50)

Almost 30 of them here. And it doesn't seem like there was any targeted like, oh, is this going to Republican voters or people? This was just like a fire hose of. Just like you were saying, flood the zone monologue of mailers. The messaging is all over the place. He's. That's what I'm saying. Like, is this some sort of a, Is there a scheme here that I'm, you know, that I'm missing? Because, well, I mean, I mean, look.

Billy Corben (10:13)

We all know that you Know, for people that work in campaigns, mail is always one of those kind of dark arts because what they actually cost to what a, some consultant, some unethical consultants actually charge for the mail, it's a pretty Grand Canyon size gap between what those margins can potentially be. I'm not accusing Joe Corolla of having done that, but, you know, I've never seen a campaign send out 30 mailers like that before. Not really.

Billy Corben (10:44)

Yeah, to every, everybody, to Democrats who are never going to vote for him. If you're running an economic, logical textbook, who does that?

Billy Corben (10:54)

And, and then on top of that, Billy, you know, the lack of efficiency for that, you know, monologue of, you know, of mailers to finish a distant fourth. I mean, again, I really do feel, I feel a little bad for Joe Corollo.

Billy Corben (11:08)

I do too. I really do.

Billy Corben (11:10)

I mean, I'm being sincere about this.

Billy Corben (11:12)

I'm gonna miss them. I'm gonna miss him.

Billy Corben (11:13)

I'm gonna miss him too. And you know, for all of the bluster, all of the, you know, the zaniness, I've always maintained, I think you agree with me. You know, there is no one more experienced in the arcane rules of Miami politics. You remember Robert Byrd, the longtime senator, he was kind of like he knew his way around the Senate. That was Joe Carollo in the city of Miami. And that institutional knowledge is going to go away. You know, his very crafty, clever interpretation. I think Joe Corruyo actually is to be commended for one thing, Billy. He came up with a viewpoint of the scam to try and delay the elections. You know, the argument whether it was going to increase turnout. Remember that was the big thing that was going to be increased. Joe Carollo came up with a brilliant tagline which was, if you move this to the election year, you're going to have even less turnout in a runoff in December. And he's absolutely right. You know, that kind of dark knowledge is gone.

Billy Corben (12:11)

Joe Carollo was one of the best to ever do it. I mean, he wrote the rule book, he ran the game. You have to, in a twisted dark way, respect it. I do. He is a Nixonian figure in that he had like, greatness in his grasp, but just his own. He was his own worst enemy. When he says, like, oh, I gave everything to this city, he's not lying. He does not have friends, he does not have family, his daughters don't speak to him. Like it's, it's kind of a sad, pathetic, lonely Nixonian thing. And he was always like the Nixon to the Suarez's Kennedys, you know, like the, the handsome Harvard educated man in his Nepo, you know, the Nepo baby fail son. And then Joe fancying himself the kind of blue collar cop, rough and tumble, you know, like the Nick again, that Nixon Kennedy dynamic, always very envious. And then he came in and he destroyed Joe ended Xavier Suarez's political career for a while, and he has helped end Francis Suarez's political career. Two generations. I mean, that is Shakespearean man. And like, again, I, I just, I think he's kind of a tragic figure in that way, because he, if, like Nixon, if he had channeled that genius and that knowledge and that sophistication and those dark arts to do good, you know, to help people, to help his family, to help the city, to help, he could have been a real force for good in this community and this country.

Billy Corben (13:39)

Billy, I actually made that argument to his face once at the dais at a commission meeting. I told him, I said, you know, like you just said so eloquently, Billy, if he had channeled all of that experience, that cunningness, because he's very cunning, but, you know, in a smart, political savvy way, he could have been one of the greatest mayors Miami and maybe Florida had ever seen. He had that ability within him. And that's why it's such a sad story today. And even though, you know, we don't have Joe Corollo and the cancer that he represented for so many years on that commission, you know, I, I will miss someone who could have been that figure and just chose not to be.

Billy Corben (14:17)

Unfortunately, if, if he had used those skills, what he did use those skills for were to bully, to shake down, to abuse. And it's just a shame. And we should mention, though, speaking of dynastic, multi generational criminal crime families, his brother, Frank Carollo. So Frank Carollo was the commissioner in District 3 for eight years. Then Joe Carollo was the commissioner of District 3 after Frank Arroyo for eight years. And now Frank Carollo was on the ballot this week running again for commissioner of District 3. And while he got, he came in first place, he only got about, what, 37, almost 38% of the vote, which puts him in a runoff with the second place candidate, Rolando Escalano. But what also happened there were these referendums on the ballot, including number four, which were for lifetime term limits, which would only allow a candidate in their lifetime to serve eight years, two terms as a city commissioner and eight years or two terms as mayor. Frank Carillo has already served two terms, eight years as commissioner of District 3. And there was just an injunction filed saying basically this referendum renders him ineligible for the runoff. And now the number two and number three vote getters is the argue, the legal argument. They're the ones who should be on the runoff. So Miami back in litigation. What is going on here and what is Frank Carollo going to be a commissioner? Is he going to be on the ballot in December? This seems like another one of these litigation clusters that could really derail the entire runoff because they're going to have to delay printing ballots. This is like what's going on?

Billy Corben (16:01)

Well, first off, it's not the voters. They're not going to decide. It's going to be a judge that decides because this is clearly going now before the courts, Billy. And I think it also, you know, bears noting. I think Frank and Joe may share a last name, but they are very different individuals, certainly in their conduct and their comportment. Not to suggest that if Frank were to go on and win and hold on to the seat, he would be in the vein of Joe Corollo. But I think to your point, while I was reading the information last night and this morning, Billy, it seems airtight to me simply because it was explicitly made clear before this item was put on the ballot why it was being put on. We've talked about the fact that Frank waited to qualify knowing that the ballot was this item was going to be put on the ballot. And it doesn't really leave much to the imagination. On top of that, when you factor in how that ballot item performed in that same district, when you look at what Frank's results were, it wasn't that Frank won overwhelmingly in a, you know, with 50% plus or more.

Billy Corben (17:08)

So I, I'm sorry, I should, we should say I didn't mention was the single most popular thing on the ballot this week in Miami. It won with over 79% of the vote. That item for lifetime term limits. Again, a repudiation of the, the Miami mafia and the dynasties that have been.

Billy Corben (17:30)

Destroying in that district. I mean, that was the citywide number certainly, but in District 3 as well, Billy. Oh, that was a overwhelmingly that result. So it's tough to see how Frank Arroyo says, hey, this should not apply to me when I knew exactly what that was potentially at stake. We now have the voters results saying that he didn't get a majority. So there clearly was not enough majority interest to put him in in the first round. I don't see how a judge could look at that and weigh and say, you know, What? Let Frank be the choice here.

Billy Corben (18:03)

Ona, let's be clear. If a judge has to determine the will of the voters in District 3, Frank Arroyo did not win outright. He did not get over 50% of the vote. He got less than 38% of the vote to qualify for a runoff. If he's eligible, he probably is not. I haven't done the math myself, but I've been told that in District 3, that this referendum for the lifetime term limits, it passed with almost like about 72% or better of the vote. That's nearly twice as many votes as Frank Carollo got. So maybe if he won outright and wasn't in a runoff, you could make the argument that he got elected. He. First of all, he didn't get elected. He only arguably advanced into a runoff if he's eligible. But more to the point, is voters, the same voters that voted for him and other candidates in that district overwhelmingly, by a spectacular, ridiculous margin, 72% voted for the term limits.

Billy Corben (18:59)

The pregnant legal question that I now have is, let's assume that, you know, the judge says, all right, you know, Frank is no longer eligible. In retroactively looking at the result of what was on the ballot that the voters clearly, en masse, overwhelmingly voted for, for, does that mean that Rolando Escalona is automatically ascended or is the two next vote getters go to that runoff in December? That's what I'm still.

Billy Corben (19:22)

I think. I think there has to be a runoff because you can't let one candidate win with 17.39% of the vote. You have to get the majority. And, like, let's look at these numbers, dude. There was 21.67% voter turnout. So you've got less than 38,000 people are making decisions and choosing leaders for a city of nearly half a million people with about 175,000 registered voters. So you have to still play by the rules. You still, Rolando Escalando or whoever still has to get over 50% of a vote. So I think there has to be a runoff. The question is, who is in that runoff? Before we go, we talked about one of the best to ever do it, Joe Carollo. Let's talk about Francis Suarez, one of the worst to ever do it. This is not just the end of his mayorship and incident, incidentally, the lifetime term limits apply to him. He can't run for commissioner ever again. He did his two terms, eight years. He cannot run for mayor of Miami ever again. He's done it. It's kind of his political Career is. It's like two generations of eras ending at the same time with Joe Carrillo and Francis Suarez. By the way, I'm in a bunker right now because I can't get to the studio because the President United States is across the street at the FTX arena with Francis Suarez. He's there touting his economic agenda, by the way, at the US American Business Forum, which I'm pretty sure there was a referendum this week at the ballot box on his economic agenda. Let's set that aside for a moment. I'm predicting the end, at least for now, of Francis Suarez's career. Remember Joe? You referred to Joe as a cancer, but that was a very apt metaphor because he would go into remission, right? And he would, like, disappear for 10 years, and then he'd come back to kill us again, like in Doral and in Miami. And the reason why Joe's done is because he doesn't have another decade. He burns all of his bridges, he comes out, he screws everybody over, he reminds everybody of who he is, and then he has to disappear. But he's pretty old at this point. He doesn't have a decade to disappear and then come back and fool the transient population and lack of institutional memory of Miamians. But Francis does have that kind of time. So I believe he could disappear for 10 years and maybe try to come back and. And con everybody again. But what's next for Francis? Well, Mayor Ponzi Botalita, we could devote.

Billy Corben (21:32)

An entire another podcast conversation to this, but I'll try and sum it up this quickly. Look, the one difference now for Francis is, unlike a lot of these other people that keep coming back, Francis is leaving this office an extraordinarily wealthy man. His net worth has gone, I think, for. Was it negative 60,000 to an excess of 12 million? Those may be conservative estimates, by the way.

Billy Corben (21:52)

Negative. Negative 100,000 when he first was elected as city commissioner 16 years ago. By the way, a lot of Americans have a net worth of negative $100,000. That's not an uncommon debt. But he went from that to 12 million.

Billy Corben (22:06)

I think the lesson is, you know, crime may not pay, but city of Miami politics does.

Billy Corben (22:09)

Clearly. What's the difference? What's the difference?

Billy Corben (22:13)

But the difference in this case for Francis is, I mean, you know, when you didn't really have a pot to piss in before, you might want to come back to political office. But, you know, he's clearly cashed out in a way that I've never seen anybody do in this job. So that's one factor. He could maybe enjoy his millions if he especially investors wisely and he doesn't get indicted for anything. The other option is that of course he does look at a future run and he's certainly young enough to do so. I just do not see an opportunity in the immediate future other than the following. Billy. The one that is kind of staring, I think, Francis in the face is the open seat county mayor position in 2028, which is actually a real job. Francis, to his credit, you know, turned kind of a weak city of Miami mayor where he checked out, I think, two years into the gig into the ultimate visitors and conventions bureau gig. Right. Like he's the biggest marketer promoter, but the county job, he's a mascot who.

Billy Corben (23:12)

Thinks he's the head coach.

Billy Corben (23:14)

That's right. That's exactly right. Dolphin Denny. Right? Not Don Schubert.

Billy Corben (23:18)

That's not even the mascot. That's just a weird guy in the stands.

Billy Corben (23:21)

That's right. So I think I would not say we can close the book on Francis, but to bring a book end to this conversation, Billy, I do also think we have to look at last night as the end of not just an era, but the end of a time. What made the city of Miami election so exciting in one respect for me and you and us longtime history watchers was it was the ultimate back to the future election. You had Joe Corolla, Xavier Suarez, Diaz, La Portilla, you know, running and engaging in this race again. The voters of Miami consigned that to the dustbin of history last night. We will never see their kind again.

Billy Corben (23:59)

Amen. On that note, mic drop. Fernanda Mondi. This has been a. A wild run. It really does feel like the end of something. Like you can actually kind of feel it. Like a weight lifted. Just sort of like I feel. I just feel different this week after all of that. I know, I know you do too. We should go to Flanagan's about it.

Billy Corben (24:20)

Don't we always?

Billy Corben (24:21)

Don't we always? Fernand, thanks so much.

Billy Corben (24:24)

Thank you, Billy.

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Billy Corben (24:35)

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Billy Corben (27:12)

On Fox One, you can stream your favorite live sports so you're there for the biggest moments as they happen. For me, I cannot deal with spoilers, so I Need to see it live. Especially on college football Saturdays and NFL Sundays. With Fox 1, you get it all. NASCAR, the MLB postseason, Edge of your seat plays. Jaw dropping moments and that rush like you're right there in the action. Sports are meant to be watched live and you can do that with Fox one. Fox one, we live for live streaming now. Freedom fighter, Snitch. Cocaine cowboy. If Miami had a Mount Rushmore of hustlers, spies and killers, Ricardo Monkey Morales would be front and center. Cigar in one hand, gun in the other, and a Mona Lisa smile that said he knew more than you ever would. Born in Cuba, Morales started out as one of Fidel Castro's intelligence guys. A true believer. But like most true believers in Cuba, it didn't take long before he became a true defector. He ditched the revolution, fled to the United States, and got himself a new gig working against Castro. It was the middle of the Cold War, and Miami was ground zero for every crazy scheme the CIA could dream up. Morales fit right in. Part spy, part soldier, part sociopath. The apocryphal tale goes that he got his nickname Monkey because he could climb, fight and wiggle his way out of anything. He trained Cuban exiles, ran guns, pulled off covert ops that sound like rejected Bond scripts, only bloodier and cheaper. One day he's on the CIA payroll, the next he's cutting deals with drug smugglers and mobsters. He was a patriot in the morning and a criminal by happy hour. And by the late 70s, Monkey had traded ideology for income. He became an informant for the cops, the kind that would help them bust bad guys while moonlighting as one. And Miami was a. A mad house of cocaine, corruption and chaos. And Monkey was in the middle of of all of it, cashing checks from every direction. In 1982, his luck ran out. Monkey was shot dead in a Miami bar. Kind of the city's unofficial retirement plan for guys like him. No one was surprised, no one talked, and no one was caught. He left behind a trail of secrets, lies and conspiracy theories that stretch from Havana to Washington to the grassy knoll in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Ricardo Monkey Morales wasn't just a product of his time. He was his time. Cold War paranoia, Cuban exile fury, and Miami Vice all rolled into one very dangerous man. And he is on my very short list of people I wish I could have interviewed in his lifetime and mine. Monkey also left behind a family, including four kids. And Ricardo Morales Jr. Joins us now to discuss his long overdue book about his father, Monkey Morales, along with his Co author Sean Oliver Gentlemen, thank you so much for being here on Because Miami. This is like the ultimate Because Miami. Because Monkey Morales is the ultimate Miami character of, like, all time. So, Rick, I want to start with you. What do people need to know about your father who know nothing about your father?

Rick Morales (30:53)

My father was a very interesting man. He had a quite a life growing up in Cuba. His father was a judge, so they were deep in the Batista regime. So when Castro took over, he stayed behind as a G2 agent to see what would happen. And then when he finally figured out Castro was going communist, he took off. He killed somebody who came to kill him and then made it to the Brazilian embassy to get out of Cuba, which took like 92 days, I think, or something.

Billy Corben (31:23)

That's always the desired outcome, right? To kill the person who comes to kill you.

Interviewee or Witness (31:26)

Right.

Rick Morales (31:27)

He found out they were coming to kill him and he killed him instead and got out of Dodge. But he left the country with one desire, and that was to go back to Cuba, to fight for Cuba and to do whatever he could to overthrow the Castro regime.

Billy Corben (31:42)

And what did that include, Rick?

Rick Morales (31:44)

That included whatever it took. Bombings, murders, teaching others how to create, how to make bombs, teaching others how to shoot, sniper training, and all the things that he had learned while he was a G2 agent in Cuba and some training that he received from the CIA upon arriving in Miami.

Billy Corben (32:02)

Just think of the YouTube tutorials he could have done if he were today. And I want to talk about that for a moment, because famously, the CIA was one of, if not the top employer in Dade county in the 1960s. Just as much, if not more so than the school system here, the public schools here in Dade County. And of course, the largest CIA substation outside of their headquarters in Langley, Virginia, was here at what they call the University of Miami South Campus, which is now near Zoo Miami. Shout out, Rod McGill. It was called JM Wave. That was just. Didn't mean anything. It was just a code name, you know, a bunch of, you know, kind of word salad. But people say, how is the CIA operating in the United States? They don't operate in the country. That's the FBI. The CIA is international. And it's because Miami was effectively designated foreign soil for the purpose of CIA operations in that era. So can you talk a little bit about his involvement with the CIA and how he sort of gets wrapped up in some of these JFK assassination conspiracy theories?

Rick Morales (33:06)

Upon arrival in Miami, the CIA recruits a lot of Cubans into a team called Op40. So they recruit like The Villaverde brothers, they recruit Barry Seal. Famously an American made movie by Tom Cruise is OP40. So they recruit all these Cubans that have specialties, bomb making snipers, you know, pilots. They need pilots for the upcoming Bay of Pigs invasion, supposedly that they were gonna give air cover for. So they're training all these Cubans for future incursions back into Cuba and, and they're receiving all these, all this training and they're receiving explosives and everything. Access to bombs from the CIA.

Billy Corben (33:50)

Sean, I think Rick's being coy. Did his father assassinate John F. Kennedy?

Sean Oliver (33:55)

Well, we're never going to. No matter how many documents become declassified, is anyone foolish enough to think that that line about anybody is ever going to be in a doc document? One of the things gleaned from going through the thousands and thousands of FBI, CIA, White House memos that we had to for this story was the lengths that the government goes to to keep their name off of anything that shouldn't be there. Thus Brigade 2506, Operation 40. 1500 Cubans come here and fall into the waiting arms of the CIA. They're trained here, they're sent back, they're uniformed here in green with no flag on it. Green. And then sent back down there to create what was to look like an insurgents from the inside.

Billy Corben (34:42)

Right.

Sean Oliver (34:43)

And of course Bay of Pigs happens. These Cubans unwittingly look skyward to see where the backup is coming in and there's nothing. So once again, in the effort for us to remain uninvolved on paper, we have the Bay of pigs and OP40. And that entire part of this story is just a microcosm for how our government has continued to deal with. You can go down ad nauseam the rebels that we've armed that we don't think about, you know, 25 years from now, how is this going to come back? Let's go to Afghanistan if you want to, but it's that short sightedness. So when you talk about jfk, you're never going to have anything definitive in anything that's in Washington. So the best you can do is connect dots with people who have stories to tell. And Rick's story to tell was something his father told him when he was out shooting with his brother. And he talked about just having run into unknowingly at the time, this American. There were a couple of Americans down there we mentioned Barry Seale, Frank Sturgis also. So he comes across this guy Ozzy, who needs a little help with his mother marksmanship and then sees A few days after, he's dispatched to Dallas, by the way, as part of a cleanup team.

Rick Morales (36:02)

So, yeah, my dad used to take us to the Everglades to shoot when we were little. From the point of little, that's the only things that he cared about doing, was teaching us how to shoot. Teaching us how to be looking for bombs and whatnot. So from the age that we're little, we're shooting and we're shooting, and we're learning how to shoot. So one and in the last year of his life, he shows up at a basketball court. We're playing basketball at Coral Park High School. And he just pulls up like he usually does, and he says, get in the car. So we get in the car and takes us out to the Everglades. Ever since we were children, he had this place in the Everglades, deep in the Everglades, that he had set up to train people to shoot and whatnot. There was targets with pulley systems. There was targets with moving barrels. So it wasn't like what Oswald did in the Marines, shooting at a static target. It was so you could learn how to shoot at people that were moving away from you, headed closer to you and away and whatnot. So in those line that last year, which is the year he dies in 82 months before that, he picks us up and takes us shooting. And while we're shooting, he says, I've no longer got witness protection. I've left the witness protection program. I've got three hits on me in Miami that are legit, and I'm not long for this world. Also, he was selling a book at the time, and he was planning to move to Spain. So he didn't know if he would get killed or he was leaving the country and never be seen again by us. So he started opening up more to us, and he answered questions. And my brother asked him the question if he had killed jfk. Because growing up, we had always been accused as being the sons of the person who shot jfk. Because dad had that huge reputation in Miami when we were small, that the Cubans had been involved. And he was one of the Cubans that were involved. And immediately his response was, I did not shoot jfk, but I was in Dallas that day because I received the phone call from my handler, which we took to be Frank Sturgis, to go to Dallas to take his cleaning crew, that's what he called it, to Dallas. He said he went to Dallas. He was there in Dallas when the assassination occurred. He called in for orders and was told to go home. The case being that the President had been killed and there was no need for anything else. Maybe if the President had been wounded, there would have been a second attempt somewhere. Maybe the snipers were going to be taken out, whoever that was.

Billy Corben (38:35)

So.

Rick Morales (38:35)

But his orders were to return to Miami, which I checked with my mother, who's still alive and was his wife at the time, and she corroborated that he had left for Dallas and told her the same thing when he got home from Dallas. And the other thing that he told us was that we asked him, do you think Oswald was the lone shooter? He said, there's no way that individual could pull off those shots because he said he didn't know him at the time. He saw the paper after the assassination, sees the face and goes, I know this guy. He was at one of my camps in the Everglades and he was practicing shooting and he was fine shooting at a static target. But when we put him into the pulley systems and all that, he was not accurate enough to have pulled off his shot and he missed the first shot, which was the easiest one. That was the other thing that, that he pointed out that the other shots would have been even tougher with all the blood pumping, the excitement and all that going on. For him to be able then to gather himself, bold action shot and take a shot would have. Would have been a miraculous shot to pull off twice.

Billy Corben (39:46)

Sean, that's a great story that a father tells his son who is wrapped up in this kind of intrigue, who had to grow up in Miami with a reputation larger than life, as Rick put it, of his father. How much of that is kind of, we'll call it self mythology and, well, you know, I, I mean, the, the book is filled with fabulous stories. It's also a meticulously researched book as well. So how do you kind of balance that? The stories of father to son, the machismo, the talk, the, you know, out of shooting out in the Everglades, telling tales with the facts and the documents.

Sean Oliver (40:24)

Well, after we all realize how much our fathers sucked after hearing these stories, we then have to dig into the separation of fact and fiction, which was half of our job.

Billy Corben (40:35)

I don't know, comparatively speaking. I had a fine childhood. Sorry, Rick.

Sean Oliver (40:40)

Yeah, so what you've got to do is you've got, by the way, the JFK thing. You could spend a lifetime now on the amount of theories. Just open Amazon, Search prime and then look at the book. So, everyone, I'll pass.

Billy Corben (40:55)

I think it was Oswald, but let's let's move on.

Sean Oliver (40:58)

But so what we have, we have Rick's firsthand account, which is in the book. And then we just lay that beside some of the things we know. I can tell you, and you probably know this 2506 and the Cubans appear in JFK documents a lot.

Billy Corben (41:18)

A lot.

Billy Corben (41:19)

What was Oswald in South Florida that we know of around the time that Monkey remembers him being in the Everglades in the camp. So you've.

Sean Oliver (41:26)

You had, you had camps. You had camps in Louisiana, Homestead, Florida.

Interviewee or Witness (41:31)

So of.

Sean Oliver (41:32)

Of those locations, I, Marita Lorenz, who they say was discredited after a big Vanity Fair piece where she talked about having been a CIA asset for Frank Sturgis, which he confirmed, confirmed in testimony up to anything regarding jfk. He did talk about giving her botulism tablets to go back and poison Fidel with. He was Fidel. She was Fidel's mistress that went to work for the CIA. So he confirms all that, but right up to anything involving jfk. Now her story continues and she talks about going to Dallas with Cubans. All she says is Cubans at a motel that Sturgis and the others were at. At one end she was putting another end she gets, she claims, into fisticuffs with an Italian mobster who she later says was Frank Ruby. And she says, I want to get out of here. This is. She gets put on a plane and sent back. So you take all these stories, you build this pastiche, right? And you try to find a thoroughfare. No one can definitively say anything. So we lay out what we know. We lay out out what's been reported. And then of course, the wrinkle to all this is I have somebody whose dad said something in 19, would you say around 81, maybe 82. Right before he was killed, it was.

Rick Morales (42:46)

82 because he dies in December of 82 and it was earlier in that year.

Sean Oliver (42:50)

So before any of this was in fashion to talk about.

Rick Morales (42:54)

And I feel the same way, Billy, as you do, that Oswald did shoot Kennedy. I just don't think that all of his shots hit the target, that there had to be somebody else shooting at the same time. So what I think is they were training them to be a better shot to give him a possibility. It's better if two people are shooting at the target than if one person. So let Oswald shoot and then he'll be the patsy. Even, you know, he did shoot. He just didn't hit every shot he took.

Billy Corben (43:24)

I could talk to you guys all day. Obviously the book monkey Morales is fantastic. I do have a couple more questions before we wrap up. Sean, I, I mentioned in the introduction the apocryphal version of how Monkey Morales got his nickname. Can you tell us how he really got his nickname Monkey?

Sean Oliver (43:42)

Yes, I can. And it is, it is certainly lore that it was for his antics, but when he was in the Belgian Congo serving the CIA with a handful of the other Cubans and they were, they were on the ground in the jungle, and they would come across. It was a very different kind of warfare there. They were villages taken out by the Simba rebels, and they came across this encampment where everyone was killed except this little Congolese girl that Ricardo took with their. Their group of soldiers. And when there, they would tuck her away whenever they would come across fire or whenever they had anticipated going into dangerous territory. But for the rest of the time, he carried her on his back. And one of the other Cubans, just being jocular, turns and says, here comes the monkey with the baby. And it stuck.

Billy Corben (44:35)

Rick, I really want to talk to you for hours about what it was like growing up in Miami at that time as Monkey Morales son. But we're at a time. But I do want to ask you because obviously your family has been repeatedly now torn apart by gun violence. First, when you lost your father in 1982. And I would like to ask you about your brother, Roberto Morales, who he was and what happened to him.

Rick Morales (45:02)

Yeah, growing up, my brother Roberto is my half brother. We used to play kids. We knew each other well. We, our families were mixed. We were. The children were put together to play together and left together.

Interviewee or Witness (45:16)

Yeah.

Rick Morales (45:16)

He was the dining coordinator of Florida State University. And on April 17, when the mass shooting took place, Florida State. He was one of the two people that died in that shooting. And it's just, I spent my life in Miami imagining that I would be the one who would end up that way, getting killed because I was on the streets like my dad, trying to. Trying to sell drugs and trying to impress my dad and work for my dad's love and, and doing all the wrong things in life. And my brother Roberto, in the meanwhile, was doing all the right things in life, going to school, graduating. And then all of a sudden, now life comes back full circle and takes him away from us with gun violence, with some right wing crazy nut, decides to go out and murder people. So it's, it's, it just brought it back. My dad dying and him dying and shooting the same way has been a horrific, horrific part to the story again. And it's just it's impossible to. To put the feelings into words. But he didn't deserve it. He was a great man.

Billy Corben (46:30)

Thanks, Rick, for sharing. And I wanted to say the books and books talk that you guys gave, which I think is on C SPAN's Book TV, we now know what the CNC SPAN stands for. Cocaine. That was one of the wildest book talks I've ever been to in my life. I want to revisit that, that video because it was crazy. And I would love to talk more to both of you someday about the book and Rick, about your life and your story and what the hell happened at Books and Books and Carl Gables when we were all there a couple of months ago. In the meantime, the book is really outstanding and. And like I said, long overdue that someone should give Monkey mor his flowers, so to speak. Sean Oliver, Rick Morales, thanks so much for being here.

Rick Morales (47:13)

Thank you.

Billy Corben (47:15)

Our Miami moment this week takes us to Miami Gardens, home of Joe Robbie stadium, and a McDonald's melee where an employee at a drive thru pulled a gun on a car full of patrons, women and a child who had waited almost an hour for their drive thru order to come up Cocaine's.

Interviewee or Witness (47:37)

I told him, I said, listen, his mama want to make mad griddles of mad chicken because this about to be a funeral at this McDonald's. I don't play these type of games. This ain't that right at all.

Sean Oliver (47:48)

And it's a car full of women, women and children.

Interviewee or Witness (47:52)

What can we possibly do to you with a burger and surprise?

Sean Oliver (47:55)

A Miami Garden's McDonald's employee arrested for pulling a gun on a car full of women and a chop child chain. Timmins says they waited a long time. Then this guy, Anthony Elliott wouldn't give them their food.

Interviewee or Witness (48:06)

And he was like, I don't have to give you nothing. He was like, what you said? What you said? And we were like, are you serious? What's really going on? So he clutched at his waist. I got on the phone with the cops. Miami Gardens police department. Y' all need to get here to McDonald's because somebody for the die for.

Sean Oliver (48:21)

This woman who already survived a shooting, she says she went into defense, defense mode.

Interviewee or Witness (48:27)

He has a death wish. He must have a death wish. There's gotta be a suicide because there's no way that I'm gonna allow you to do anything bodily harm to mine.

Sean Oliver (48:35)

All over McNuggets, all over McChicken.

Billy Corben (48:38)

McChicken.

Interviewee or Witness (48:40)

He must wanna have a MC funeral. You put my kids in harm's way and that's a problem for me. I'm not that type of girl. I'm not that type of woman. And I'm not that type of parent.

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Billy Corben (48:58)

Cuervo.

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What are you doing here?

Sean Oliver (48:59)

Cuervo? Anytime someone says Cuervo, I show up.

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Billy Corben (49:09)

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Billy Corben (49:15)

Cuervo.

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Rick Morales (49:19)

Cuervo.

Billy Corben (49:19)

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Billy Corben (49:25)

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