Join Craig Collins as he delves into the wildest Florida Man stories of 2024, from bizarre challenges to heroic neighbors. These stories capture the spirit of spontaneity and chaos that surrounds the infamous Florida Man. As the year closes, we reflect on the humorous yet thought-provoking moments that made headlines.
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Dana Lash’s Absurd Truth Podcast, sponsored by Kel-Tec.
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It’s his life mission to make bad decisions. It’s time for Florida Man.
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Thrilled I get to pay off what I started last Friday. This is The Dana Show. My name is Craig Collins filling in. These are the 10 best Florida man stories of 2024, including one that just happened over the weekend. A Florida man crashed into a trooper after a high-speed chase with other cops in Tampa. Running from cops usually doesn’t end well if you crash into a different cop that’s not part of the pursuit. But that happened. That occurred just over the weekend. Some of the other craziest ones from this year that are great. A Florida man took on a bizarre challenge of eating raw chicken every day. He promoted this on social media in the earlier parts of the year and then stopped posting on social media by about June of this year. We assume he’s okay. We hope he’s okay. At one point, he had half a million followers on Instagram specifically as he talked about the fact that he was planning on consuming raw chicken every single day as much as he could until bad things occurred, which again, you hope for all the best there. No one’s heard from him in a while. A Florida man saved his neighbor from the jaws of an 11-foot alligator in This happened back in April of this year. The way he did it, hit the alligator with his car. A man said that he saw his neighbor in a potentially deadly situation, so he did the only thing he could do, waved his arms, waved his hand, got in his car and started driving, and the alligator regretted the entire situation. Interesting story. A friend for life, as far as the neighbor goes, if they weren’t already. You made it all the way to the top was a question that was asked to a Florida man who for no reason at all scaled a cell phone tower. As the Florida man climbed back down the cell phone tower, the police seemed to be impressed with his ability to climb and then promptly arrested him for the illegal activity, which I love a lot. The guy was proud of himself. He’s like, yeah, pretty crazy. I didn’t think I could do it, and I climbed it, and now I’m going to go to jail. A Florida woman led deputies on a chase in a stolen ambulance. That was a real story that happened in the middle of this year in June. And then one final one, and I think this might be my favorite Florida man. A Florida man got arrested after sending in a bomb threat against himself and then complaining that nobody in the police seemed to care about the bomb threat he made about himself. There’s no top to that. There’s a bomb. It’s going to go off on my property. There’s people who told us they’re going to leave a bomb here. There’s a bomb threat situation. You guys got to come out. And then when they didn’t do it, the guy was eventually like, what do I got to do, man, to convince you that my bomb threat against me is real? And that’s probably the part where they went a little too far. He says he made a mistake in the threats he made against himself, and he was attempting to get revenge on someone else and just mistargeted a little bit or a lot. Sounds like there might be some mental health issues there. But that Florida man probably both regrets the initial bomb threats against himself and then also eventually asking the cops why they’re not doing their job better and taking down him, the bomb threat individual. But those are some of the best Florida man stories of the year. That is Florida man. Dana will be back next year with brand new ones. Craig Collins filling in on the Dana show.
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By the way, a lot of media is having a comeuppance. No, I’m kidding. They’re not truly admitting what they did wrong, but they’re at least saying that they should have done better in not being as on the take on the Democratic side of the aisle as they evidently were during the entirety of Biden’s presidency and now with Trump coming into office. I want to play this. This is CBS News and one of their correspondents, Jane Crawford, saying we should have done a better job. of asking questions about the mental health of a president that couldn’t figure out how to walk off a stage or disappeared into the rainforest, if you remember that one, which was uniquely amazing. Here we go.
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Undercovered, underreported. That would be, to me, Joe Biden’s obvious cognitive decline that became undeniable in the televised debate.
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At the president. The presidential debate was unquestioned.
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And, you know, it’s starting to emerge now that his advisers kind of managed his limitations. It’s been reported in The Washington Journal for four years.
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Who thought that was happening the entire time? A whole bunch of conservative media.
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And yet he insisted that he could still run for president. We should have much more forcefully questioned whether he was fit for office for four years, which led to a primary. For the Democrats, it could have changed the scope of the entire election.
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I love that the the next thought there is how it would have impacted politics, because that’s why you didn’t tell the truth about Joe, is you wanted to impact politics in a positive way and for you a positive way and make sure that Biden got reelected and Trump didn’t. The other big challenge with Democrats ever being honest about Biden, and this doesn’t get talked about enough, is if they had told us the truth, say, two years in. Three years in, whenever they thought that the campaign season truly was starting, when Trump announces that he’s running again and you want a candidate to be running against him from jump and having that entire process. How do you not also have to impeach Biden if you admit that he’s not mentally capable of being president for the next four years and you do it in a way that media is now calling for actual honesty? and just he doesn’t want to do it anymore he’s he’s giving up you know sooner um as opposed to you know telling us that he can’t do it then how would you keep him and if you didn’t keep him in office if they had told us the truth and this is the reason they didn’t do it and they had impeached him which you would have to do if you admit that his brain doesn’t work you would have broken a glass ceiling by accident in a way that you didn’t want to do it the democratic party wants their politicians elected by more than just their policies. Actually, they want them elected in spite of their policies. They want you to elect the first woman president because it’s a candidate on the Democratic side of the aisle. They want you to elect the first black woman president. Who knows? As they continue to look for other different things that they’re going to say, yeah, elect somebody for this reason. And if Biden had been impeached, Kamala Harris would have become the president and you would have lost the breaking of the glass ceiling. And I don’t even think Harris wanted it, which is kind of crazy. Not in that way. Not then. And what I mean by that is she didn’t want to feel blamed for the first few years of Biden’s failures. Everybody wanted to pretend they were starting new, although Harris did a terrible job among other terrible jobs while running for president and trying to distance herself from Biden because, darn it, she’s the vice president. And she’d have more say and probably even knew. you know, in the back corners, as did many of the people in her administration, that she was more in power than he was. Although other people in power, I think Jill, Dr. Jill, Dr. Biden, as I’m contractually required. I love that all the time. I stole that from another radio guy that I respect a lot. But anyway, I have to call that person, Dr. Jill, Dr. Biden, much because even though she’s not a medical doctor, I got to make sure I remember that she received a doctorate. But I think she wielded a lot of power. and did it behind the scenes and behind closed doors, and Hunter Biden was doing his own stuff and selling art. It’s just crazy the amount of things that happened over the last four years outside of just the cratering of our economy or a few other of the issues that everyday Americans face, but the true scope of lying. And again, in retrospect, pretending as though you wanted to ask more serious questions, challenge things more and force a primary process as if you didn’t evaluate what also would come with that and how that would have been bad for your political side of the aisle. The only reason that media can be honest now is they know Trump was inevitable. They couldn’t beat him. It didn’t matter who they picked. He wasn’t losing. And they refused to accept that all the way up until Election Day. And now that they have to accept it, they’re going to look back and be like, well, we should have done more to try to tell you the truth. We had no interest in telling you because we knew it would hurt us and we knew it would make Trump a shoo-in, even though him also surviving an assassination attempt and standing up and pumping his fist in the air. was one of the more American things you’re ever going to see anybody do, much less Donald Trump, if you love him or hate him. That, according even to, I think, Mark Zuckerberg, probably crystallized his opportunity to be the next president because, darn it, it was incredible to watch for anybody. Again, if you hate him or like him, Bullitt barely didn’t kill him, and then he stands up and yells, fight. That’s something. That’s the kind of thing you want from anybody that’s in a leadership position anywhere in this country or world, for that matter, to not be intimidated, even if you should have died that day, as horrible as it is to say that out loud. All right, quick break. A lot more, and he’s lucky he didn’t. And by the grace of God, in his own admission, he says he didn’t.
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And now, all of the news you would probably miss. It’s time for Dana’s Quick Five.
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This is a new story. This isn’t an old story. A bubble boy was rescued. I feel weird in the way I just said that. In Brazil, a sailor by the name of Rafael Garcia de Prado found a dude, a kid, eight years old, drift in the sea in a bubble. The bubble seemed like it was fragile, maybe even punctured a little bit. So the guy moved his ship into a spot where he could rescue the eight-year-old who thanked him. repeatedly in Portuguese since this was in Brazil I can’t play the audio we’re getting him out of the bubble and into the ship and bringing him back to safety some questions still exist like how did the boy get into the bubble and get in the ocean in the first place but darn it saved a kid on the water that part is a great I love part of that story So, so much. A police commissioner has been ousted after dozens of NYPD bosses complained and a bunch of other information has come out. It’s one week after a sex scandal also rocked the NYPD. I am pro-cop, definitively pro-cop. Being pro-cop means that when cops do bad things, you tell the truth about it, but you don’t allow that to overshadow all the cops who do great things every day in our society, in our country, in the world. But what’s interesting about this is sometimes the way the New York PD behaves, say, compared to other departments, maybe more their press people than the actual people serving and protecting the city. And sometimes the arrogance of some of those individuals winds up hurting them, like I think it did in the place of this commissioner, who had spoken negatively quite a few times about quite a lot, even called reporters pieces of trash and winds up out of a gig for, well, seeming to be someone who’s not exactly living up to to the standard you’re supposed to live up to. I said that nicely. I didn’t have to be nice, but it’s almost the new year. I saw this story, too. There was someone with a sword in a parking lot. An Indiana man was arrested in Indianapolis after allegedly pulling out a machete at a family dollar. I feel like a lot of things about this story are terrible, mostly the family dollar machete part. Who brings a machete to the family dollar? I have that question first and foremost. Can’t exactly buy one there. I don’t think that’s something you’re picking up on the way. But apparently an argument of some kind causing an issue in a parking lot ends with luckily no one being hurt, but a machete being wielded, which got to be a weird moment. too, once that happens. And then finally, one last story that I thought was interesting. Three relatives actually passed away after eating the same Christmas cake months after a baker’s husband died from food poisoning. This story has begged a whole lot of questions about what the heck is going on as far as this bakery is concerned, as far as individuals connected to this story are concerned. This feels like a conspiracy theory that’s going to deserve more attention. although probably it will pale in comparison to all the political stuff we talk about in the new year. But three relatives have passed away after eating a Christmas cake months after someone’s husband also died from consuming products from this baker’s store. But all right, that’s a story that’s real and out there in the world and terrifying and not uplifting at all. Hey, college football is coming up in a few days. At least that’s going to be wonderful. All right, another thing out there that I thought was pretty interesting is Mexico is going to be creating an app that lets migrants send alerts if they’re detained in the United States. This typically will be used for people who are coming into the country illegally. I don’t know that the people will even all be from Mexico per se, but they would be using an app created by the Mexican government that can alert family members to being detained and even try to alert, you know, authorities to the fact that they’re being detained illegally. This app seems to be designed in trying to, at least in some way, shape or form, benefit people that think that they’re being detained, you know, legally unfairly, but also might have a byproduct that’s valuable of telling a lot of people that they’re not succeeding in an attempt to, say, get into our country illegally. And that’s what we need. We need a deterrent that needs to be a thing that causes us to get a grasp or a handle on what’s going on. Mexico is also alerting citizens about the likelihood of being detained in the United States. So that’s something that’s certainly growing in, you know, awareness as Trump gets closer and closer to becoming the next president. And as Tom Holman, the border czar, continues to say out loud the amount of stuff he’s going to do the moment he’s actually in that role as president, because darn it, there’s a whole lot of things that matter, and a whole lot of things that become important about doing much better than we’ve done so far. And actually, when you talk about the border specifically… One of the more interesting discussions on CNN was about the cost of handling, you know, deporting a lot of people, moving people out of this country that shouldn’t be here. And one of the more ownership moments that I’ve seen in a while with Abby Phillips on CNN involved talking about exactly this topic and having her own people, her own talking heads on the TV, telling her how wrong she was about what she was saying. because she was claiming that the expense of deporting people is just going to be too high. Darn it. We’re just not going to be capable of doing it. And there are some issues with that way of thinking. There are some issues with that way of discussing this topic, because the amount of money that it’s costing us to have people be here illegally and be supported by our government is, well, darn it, through the roof. But I thought that that was an interesting moment on television because if people say the part out loud that you don’t like them to say, you eventually just get quiet enough to where you try to ignore that you just lost. And then I think the go-to move is also to take a break and to get away from the topic entirely. But that was interesting to me because more and more often, I guess I can say it this way before I play any of that audio for you. More and more often you are watching parts of media at least accept the person on the other side who’s saying the thing that, you know, is true, that many Americans believe to be true, that many Americans would say is one of the bigger reasons that they say voted for Trump to be in office. And what I what I think is so fascinating about that is these are the types of rhetoric points that you wanted to ignore in the past that now you just have to silently accept. And here I’ll play an example and then I’ll tell you what I mean. This is that conversation back and forth with Abby Phillip and her panel talking about how she thinks it’s going to be too expensive to actually remove people who are here illegally.
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One of the things I’ve heard him give a lot of interviews, and I know he understands the problem that they want to solve, but he doesn’t seem to have a sense of the scope of what it’s going to take, what it’s going to cost. And that’s a critical question.
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I actually had a meeting with Tom Holman the other day, along with a number of my colleagues, and we talked about this very issue.
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That’s Mike Lawler, by the way, being like, we do know about this.
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It’s already costing states like New York billions of dollars of taxpayer money to provide free housing, clothing, food, education and health care to illegal immigrants. Then you have the situation where you have criminal aliens committing violent crimes, just as we saw a woman being burned alive on a subway by a man who was previously deported and then came back into the United States illegally.
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So that’s another moment that we’ve seen this conversation evolve. If you were to say that people who are here illegally sometimes, not always, commit horrible crimes, in the past, the left would yell at you for being a racist. But now that there have been enough high-profile instances of people who don’t have the right to be in this country, who also did horrible things like that person who lit someone on fire on the New York subway, now you have to accept that there is an increased amount of dangerous people that have come into our country. Again, I’m not trying to say that everyone who comes across the border is in that group. It’s sort of insane to say that, and Democrats are pretending Republicans say that even when they’re not. And Tom Holman’s stated mission is to remove the dangerous people from our society, not people who are simply here illegally, but people who have done terrible things after coming into our country illegally. That should be a no brainer discussion for most Americans. Like, yeah, I don’t think I want people to be allowed to stay who’ve committed horrible acts of violence or, you know, serious crimes who also don’t have any right to be here. There’s no real argument to keep someone in our country when that is the scenario they’re in, even for those bleeding heart people who want to say that there is an argument on the other side. for other individuals, and yet somehow this is still a debatable point. Well, people are now finally ceding that part of the discussion and not attacking a person on a CNN for saying it.
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Thanks for tuning in to today’s edition of Dana Lash’s Absurd Truth Podcast. If you haven’t already, make sure to hit that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.