The Joe Carollo crisis management media tour is a joke, insult to Cubans

If you haven’t seen it yet, the new Joe Carollo show is a must!

The Miami commissioner’s new crisis management media tour on Spanish language TV and radio started last week and has been escalating every day a little more. From Pedro Sevcec to Actualidad Radio to Caracol. But Ladra doesn’t know how it can get better than Sunday’s coming interview with Jim DeFede.

CBS Miami has been kind enough to show us little teases during the news and post them online, but the whole interview airs at 11:30 a.m. Sunday and Ladra can’t wait. Because, finally, Joe found someone bigger and smarter and louder than him to put him in his place. DeFede does not allow Joe to just tell his lies without challenging them. And it was about time. This will be must see TV.

The newest Carollo tour has been classic Joe, who always turns to the same sad story when he is mad at someone. Just ask former Doral Mayor Luigi Boria whose campaign Carollo ran so he could be named city manager and then turned on him when Boria fired him for being too Joe. Or ask Zoraida Barreiro or Tommy Regalado who have ran against him and have been hit with mailers calling them communists. In fact, that’s not even Tommy Regalado with Sean Penn in the photo of that mailer, which Jim DeFede will ask Carollo about on his show. It’s Jose Regalado.

“Chavistas! Communistas! They want to do business with Castro’s regime! With Maduro!”

It’s called changing the narrative. He wants to distract and deflect from the recall or maybe from the residents demanding the city repeal the Special Area Project zoning benefits for developers. And Carollo, like always, is taking it next level. People should not be fooled by this. Not just because he is the boy who cried communist wolf, but also because he is using our own emotional weakness against us.

In fact, we should be disgusted at the lack of respect he is showing the Cuban exile and the Venezuelan community. Es una falta de respeto. And it’s an insult to our intelligence.

It’s easy to call the Democrat activists who started the ball rolling radical leftists when you represent Little Havana, but notice how he hasn’t said that of former Miami-Dade Commissioner Bruno Barreiro, whose GOP credentials are stronger than Joe’s and who is also lending the recall effort his name and his support (and, hopefully, his voter base). Instead, Carollo calls him “Brunito” — doesn’t that remind you of Fidel Castro? — and and makes baseless accusations saying he will go with his intel to the state attorney. There he is, playing police officer again.

Former Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez , who has a daily rush hour radio talkshow, calls him Inspector Clouseau. You know, like in The Pink Panther. But Inspector Clouseau had good intentions. Carollo does not.

Barreiro, who was enjoying the Heat game Saturday night, laughed at what he said. “I don’t know what he’s talking about,” Barreiro told Ladra, and yes I apologized for interrupting in the second quarter. “Let him go to the authorities. He’s got nothing on me because there’s nothing to get.”

Ladra would like to see Carollo call Miriam Gonzalez, the 72-year-old lady in the first recall TV commercial a communist. Or a radical leftist. That would be laughable, right? Let’s see him call Chelin Duran, a Brickell property manager who has helped newly minted Commissioner and Carollo ally (but for how long?) Alex Diaz de la Portilla with his campaigns in the past, a Castro apologist because she went on radio to blast him for how he’s let real city issues — like dark street lights and a promised sea wall — be ignored and replaced with politiqueria about who gives out the city keys and why the mayor didn’t invite him.

He sounds ridiculous. Puffing out his chest and raising his eyebrows dramatically. Classic Carollo.

Look, Ladra doesn’t really know Joe Arriola except that he seems like a highly effective and well-connected person who is right on the recall and wrong on Cuba. And I’ve been critical of his son, Miami Beach Commissioner Ricky Arriola, for wanting to bring a Cuban consulate to our back yard. But so what? Who cares? The Arriolas can no more bring a Cuban consulate to Miami than Ladra can play for the Heat. The recall has nothing to do with that. And Joe Carollo is not the protector of the Cuban exile community, single-handedly stopping a secret black market of business with the Cuban and Venezuelan regimes.

But he is a tremendo comemierda and hypocrite. Because he points to communists everywhere when it is he who is acting like a Fidel or a Maduro. Spying on political enemies and turning city staff loose on them to retaliate against the dissidents. Silencing dissent at city commissions. Using his bully pulpit to beat up on anybody with any criticism of him at all. Cuban Americans more than anybody else should be incensed.

There are plenty of good, just reasons why Joe Carollo needs to be recalled. And it is not just because he harassed a Little Havana businessman who supported his opponent. That is not, like he says, one of the reasons on the recall petition. But it could be. And just because he says the businessman, Bill Fuller of Ball and Chain, pleaded guilty to the code enforcement violations, doesn’t mean that Carollo was right in harassing him and hiding in the bushes to take photos and using the code enforcement department as his own personal mob.

Tu no eres policía, aunque tienes el complejo. Report the violation and let the staff do their job.

Carollo says he hasn’t been able to focus on affordable housing and the other promises he made because he’s been stuck in lawsuits, like the federal lawsuit Fuller filed after the commissioner violated his first amendment rights, which have already cost the city more than $140,000, But he sure has had time to plan the Little Havana Nights to compete with that businessman’s popular Viernes Culturales (more on that later) and he has time to stalk Fuller and take photographs of private citizens’ comings and goings. He has time to hang around the district with Miami-Dade Commissioner Eileen Higgins, looking very much like he’s pretending to work at something.so he can look like he’s working on something.ā

Notice in his post he says “a very important and productive work day walking Calle Ocho” together but either its on separate days or Higgins had a wardrobe change.

All the while the city pays his legal bills which has to be close to $200,000 already, to defend the lawsuits against him and by him, including the federal first amendment lawsuit filed by Fuller is still on. It doesn’t matter if he had code violations or not, Carollo.

There’s at least another $24,000 or so in two separate checks — if it’s more than $20,000 it has to go to the commission — that are part of a settlement with Carollo’s former chief of staff Steven Miro, the one that was fired after he reported the abuse of office to the State Attorney. The settlement was for violating Florida public records law. Miro has also sued for wrongful termination.

The abuse of office he reported is among the very legitimate reasons listed on the recall Carollo petition. The commissioner used taxpayer funds to pay for paella — arroz con pollo is what he wants to call it then, fine, it doesn’t matter if it was arroz con pollo or arroz con huevo frito or arroz con frijoles. What it has become is an arroz con mango. But we know his office paid almost $4,000 out of city funds for arroz of some kind, salad, bread, plates and flatware to the public housing where a lot of elderly live. He doesn’t even deny it now. He brags about taking his constituents food.

But he wasn’t just taking them lunch on any given Thursday. He was there to introduce Alex Diaz de la Portilla, who at that time was running for county commission. I believe it was also around the time the absentee ballots arrived. It was a campaign event. Using pubic resources to benefit your political crony? Sounds like Venezuela.

And he also increasingly sounds like Maduro. Even before DeFede, on Sevcec he was nuts about some lady selling chocolates for Chavistas and how he had been vindicated by Fuller’s guilty plea in code enforcement. He punctuates every other word and starts elevating his voice a little at a time so that it has that dramatic flair.

In fact, Ladra thinks he’s not just crazy, he’s a sociopath. He really believes his own lies. He has told these lame stories so many times he has now become the protagonist of those stories. He might actually watch DeFede’s show Sunday — Ladra will be live tweeting — and think he looks great. Like a big hero.

He’s that delusional.

Joe Carollo, Joe Carollo recall

The Joe Carollo crisis management media tour is a joke, insult to Cubans added by Ladra on February 22, 2020
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