Welcome to the ENT! Dr. Richard Rosello is the former governor of Puerto Rico. In this episode, Ricky shares some stories about leading Puerto Rico through 2 terrible hurricanes, negotiating with President Trump, a terrible political scandal and surviving the death threats that ensued. Great stories from a good person, caught up in a series of dramatic life events. As a quick reminder, the Expert Network Team provides free consultations. We would love the opportunity to be of service to you or someone you care about. Just scroll the liner notes to contact one of our experts or today’s guest. And please share this podcast with anyone who you think might find it interesting. As always, it is good to have an expert on your side. —
Dr. Richard Rosello
Consultation: https://rickyrossello.com/contact/
Substack: https://rickyrossello.substack.com/
Book: https://rickyrossello.com/the-book/
Longevity: https://rickyrossello.com/longevity/
RMI link: https://rmi.life/rossello
Social media: @ricardorossello
Website: rickyrossello.com
Welcome to the Expert Network Team podcast.
Welcome to today's Expert Network Team podcast. I am your host, Nathan Merrill of Goodspeed Merrill here with Karl Frank of A& I Wealth Management and Our bonus episode here with governor, former governor, Honorable Ricardo Rossello the former governor of Puerto Rico. And if you've been privileged to listen to our prior two podcasts, he has told us all about amazing stuff with regenerative health and stem cells and that sort of stuff.
But he has a very unique background as a scientist who also did a stint in politics. And so Ricardo, I want to give you the opportunity to explain yourself, like . How did that happen? Yeah. My, my wife asks me about this all the time as well. It's I will give it my best shot, but, I was a scientist and for the most part, I grew up around a family that was in, involved with politics.
My father being a great leader. And, when I saw the dark side of politics when I was very young, so when it was time to choose a career, I said, I'm going to choose the complete opposite of politics. And I went to science little did I know, and I love I'm in wonder and awe with science, but little did I know that those tools that I was accruing were going to one day, Served me in my efforts to become a governor.
How did this transpire? And how did I make the switch? The first reason was there, port Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States, and I am passionately involved with one theme, which is ending the colonialist territory for Puerto Rico and transitioning Puerto Rico to becoming a state.
I'm a proud. U. S. Citizen. Most of our islanders are and and we've been part of the United States for over 100 years, but we're still second class citizens. So that was what first opened the door for me because it was a passion project. So around 2012 there was a big plebiscite. Nobody wanted to touch it with a 20 foot pole.
I was 30 something and I said I'll lead the effort right a lot of the a lot of the main politicians thought they were going to lose If they touched it and long and behold, we made a very effective grassroots effort and for the first time in puerto rico's history statehood defeated the current territorial agreement.
So that, that sort of spiraled me up into the the ranks of potential leaders in the future, although I was still a little bit away from it. And again, I was very young, so I had no rush and And no real desire at that point to to do it All I had was a desire for puerto rico to become a state fast forward and one time i'm having a conversation with with my father in a tennis court we that's how we part of the way we we relate we play tennis we we talk and so forth and I started, we started discussing some of the issues from the island and I said, look there, there should be a way of looking at this and not just hear the same song and dance every year and nothing happened and approach it either scientifically or in a business fashion with a plan and so forth and so that got my gears going and I started an effort that was called Plan for Puerto Rico the idea was to, to Instead of just having these campaign promises towards the end, which is, it's tone deaf.
It's I want better education. I want better health care. I'm still waiting for the candidate that says, I want worse education or worse health care. That you can give some, that you could give some actual action items to the people about what you were going to do again. Very young, very naive, and very idealistic at this point.
And I started that process not expecting to become a candidate, but expecting to give it to somebody that would actually use it. So as we were halfway through that process, I saw that none of the candidates were interested in what we were doing. They were interested in other things. So one day I had a an epiphany and I just said, to hell with it.
I will do it. And that started again. A race that was compelling. I had a primary against a very likable Congress member from Puerto Rico. He obviously was older, and he As the story goes, he became governor after I did later downstream but I beat him in a close primary race and then I beat six other other candidates to, to become a governor of Puerto Rico.
And my narrative, I was probably the worst of them all as a polemist, as a politician, as a speaker, as a debater. But they fell into the trap of looking at all of the things that I was presenting and arguing against them everything that I presented, they would argue.
And so in every debate it wasn't the discussion wasn't about healthcare. It was about my plan for healthcare, or it was about my plan for streamlining. And so I got I got the headlines, even though it was an attack and people had the sense that. Things were going to happen right.
They might have not gotten the finer points of it, but the things were going to happen. And I get elected, we have this plan, we have the legislation ready. And people probably think, people probably thought. Business as usual was going to happen, but when how it typically goes in Puerto Rico is January 2nd, you have a ceremony midday, you swear in and and then you start and then eventually you get things going.
I went to the to the president of the Supreme Court in Puerto Rico. She was young as well but from a different party. And And I went to her quarters and I asked her to swear me in. She was surprised because being from different parties, she thought I would look for somebody else.
And she was like, oh, I'm honored and so forth. And I said, but under one condition. And she's she's, everybody's looking at me like, of course the other shoe has to fall. And I said, that you swear me in at 12. 01 midnight. And she's she's like 1201 and it's yep, 1201 midnight.
And but we can't do it outside. Nope. Swear me in at your quarters and we'll do it at that point. Long story short, swears me in at midnight. At 1210, after I swear in, I have all of my appointees at Secretary of State, which is a five minute drive, and I sign my first six executive orders that changed the landscape the fiscal landscape in Puerto Rico, right?
Needless to say, I was heading into a fiscal fiscal calamity. I think this is what I spoke to to Nate about. To give you context when I came in, we had about 500 million dollars in the bank. And we had an outstanding debt liability of 127 billion dollars, right? So we had to come in make changes So the executive orders were in that vein We signaled that we were going to start reducing cost slashing the outstanding benefits the outstanding budget that was in place right now Declare fiscal emergency.
Start a reduce political appointments by 45 percent and so on and so forth to the tune that when people woke up that morning the landscape had changed, right? The framework had changed and, something, some parallels can be drawn to what's going on right now. I was going to say, did they take a page out of your playbook to It, it sounds a little bit like Doge.
It is. We did Doge before Doge and perhaps it was but we did it, we did it structurally. There was an entity created a fiscal entity to, to drive these things through, but part of my commitment was to downsize government by about we had 120 some agencies.
I wanted to get 'em to 35. I was only. able to get them about to 80. But we downsized the agencies and I was able to reduce the payroll by about 20 percent. And here's the kicker. I didn't have to fire a single individual to do and it's because we implemented a set of strategies that, that I've proposed.
They're in my sub stack as well. I proposed Doge to use as well. Yeah, to give people voluntary transition exits. You will pay for it today, but in one or two budget cycles, they're up the books. And, that's what happened to us. And I will shrink it down and then we can get into the stories, but.
fiscal crisis. I have to deal with an oversight board. We're, we start to to mesh things together. We pass more reforms in the first 30 days that had been passed in the last 20 years in Puerto Rico. And it was because it was a blitzkrieg, right? I call it in my book, I call it a blitzkrieg.
It's even though the legislative piece Trump is not doing it, he's doing it by the force of executive orders. I did this plan for Puerto Rico where I had all of my legislature sign a commitment that whatever was in the plan for Puerto Rico was going to make it into statute. And that included labor reform, reducing, downsizing government private public entities and so forth.
And so we went in through and I maximized that one window. I think that's one of the good things that, that I was able to do. I maximized the window of my highest influence as chief executive to get reform passed. Of course, still tinkering, battling oversight board. And as we're landing on something eight months into my term, not one, but two major hurricanes hit the island.
The main one being Maria that many of you might recall because it is the largest, more, most damaging hurricane in the, Modern history of the United States. And of course, the other one Nathaniel no. The other one was was Irma two weeks We were hit by Irma's September 6th, 2017, and then September 20th 20 2017 was Maria.
That was, that was devastating. After that happened, The mindset was a twofold. It's not like a hurricane hit it. It looked like a bomb had dropped on the island. It's very hard to explain to somebody that, that wasn't there. But picture an island, no roads, no access to phone lines, water shortage, energy didn't come back in, in most places in over a year.
It was a very grueling experience. So we had an emergency phase. a recovery phase and then What I aspire to have which was the rebuild phase that was the light at the end of the tunnel and in That time frame I interlock interacted plenty with with president trump we had some good and we had some bad and in my book I talk at length about it where we're essentially You know I preface his chapter by saying if you think I'm going to glorify Trump, you're mistaking.
If you think I'm going to Destroy him. You're you're going to be disappointed. I will tell you what I saw You know and how I see this political phenomenon that I don't think is for discussion or debate that he is and what makes him tick and what are his is his flaws and what are his strengths?
So I was able to get a bird's eye view of that interact with him you think he's changed a lot since? I don't think probably you can relate to this as an outsider coming in at the machinery that is government. I don't honestly know that Trump understood what he was dealing with at the U.
S. Level. So where some of your interactions do you suspect they might go differently in the second Trump presidency? Absolutely. Here's the dirty little secret that nobody is going to tell you. There is, everybody talks about experience going to office and so forth. There is no experience quite like being the president or the chief executive officer of a country or territory.
The buck stops with you. There's no amount of preparation that will get you the inside track. You could have some, but it's not to the level. What Trump has now and what I believe is his unique opportunity is a few things. Number one, he is other than Grover Cleveland.
He is the only president that has been president has had time to reflect on being president and now gets to be president again. So he is really the most experienced person other than Grover. Cleveland to go into office at that point number two He is not limited by the constraints of a re election, bid, right?
And number three brings me to the point which I tried to do in puerto rico and I hopefully That was I had a lot of failures but that was one of my successful parts which was I was able to capitalize on what I call and others call the policy window, right? The moment in time where things align in a certain way And you can get things passed and things going just because of the level of influence that you have at that point Right and trump has that right the approval rating window, right?
Everybody's on your side You can't do anything wrong. You just push So so he has, so the benefit is that he has the approval window which I did but the other added benefit that he has is that he had four years of work that he's done and four years to think about those four years of work that he's done.
And that's why you see a barrage of of executive orders. Now, my, my Advice would have been that that not only do executive orders because they're limited in scope but do statutes right now push the legislation right legislation now because I think a big litmus test and I know we're jumping around and we haven't even finished on our stuff but a big litmus test for me about his policy window and his influence was How many of his appointees were going to be confirmed, right?
I followed the poly markets. I figured out some were high, some were low. And to me, I said, look if they if he gets if he gets through all, but let's say three of the appointees, he's got enormous power and enormous influence, right? Because that was the discussion, people didn't know if Paul C.
Goebbels was going to pass, if, Patel Kennedy and so forth. And he's passed them all. They've all passed, so to me, it's just a litmus test of saying, hey, if I put something in front of Congress right now, two things are happening. One, Republicans right now are. Are, following orders in Congress to what, following suit to what Trump's agenda, right?
And secondly, the Democrats are completely shell shocked, right? They are completely at a loss and they haven't been able to reorganize. They will, and the, the Republicans being in line. Is going to crumple eventually, so why not take this moment to pass the important statutes and legislations that you want to pass because then what you have to do the rest of the administration is making sure that those get implemented as opposed to have to lobby and fight.
So that would be a little bit of my inside baseball on what I appreciate you pausing your story to interject like Comparable experience. But so you had the two hurricanes. It was a bomb. You're getting to the rebuilding phase. I think that's where you Yeah, and then you know, that's when and then I want to share with you a time period of about two months in 2019 in 2019.
The polls in Puerto Rico, governors don't get reelected, not because they can't, but just because people won't have them, right? So it's the history and so forth. Typically, a governor is a lame duck by half of his term because the midterm polls show him 20 or 30 or her 20 or 30 points behind, right?
May 2nd 2019, that, that mid poll election comes out. I am leading those polls. It was the first time in 25 years that an incumbent governor was leading the polls. And I was leading my closest opponent back then was behind me by about 17 points. Wow. So I was it, it seemed like things were
You were on the verge making history. For making history and for being reelected a month after I, I make my state of the union address where I announced my my, the first year of economic growth in about 20 years in Puerto Rico, the lowest unemployment rates in the history of Puerto Rico, the lowest crime rates in the history of Puerto Rico.
And so you'd figure. That just keeps getting a little bit better. And then a month after, I'm in my office sitting down contemplating resignation. And you're asking yourself how did this happen? And I'll tell you, and I'll show you how fickle politics can be. And, how careful we, we need to be when this happens.
About two weeks before that, I go to my first vacation. With with my wife and my kids, I hadn't taken a day off since I took office and a two things happened. First a two of my ex ministers or secretaries got arrested for corruption charges. Mind you the corruption efforts where we're spearheaded by a reform that we push forward and an M.
O. U. We made with the federal government to track down corruption. And a few days later, which was the I think the powder keg that exploded a communication that I had with my internal team that had You know, very unfortunate language and so forth came out. And it created, there was, even though these numbers were good there, there was still an underlying pain after the hurricane and after the death and so forth, right?
That it just needed a little bit of a powder cake and it exploded and from one day to another. I went from being a shoe and reelected official to essentially being an outcast and realizing very quickly in the span of two weeks that, that, number one, my family wasn't safe.
I had a lot of protests and a lot of, plenty of death threats and not only to me, but to my children But also that I wasn't, what I was elected to be, which was an executive to execute things. I was not going to be able to do anything else. I was going to be able to stay and I remember talking to some of the lawyers because they, they threatened impeachment and a lot of these things.
Talking to some of the lawyers, and they explained the case why none of this was going to happen, that i could just stay. Then I remember asking them, that's great. Thank you. But let me ask you why? Why would i just stay? Why? Why would i hold, the seed hostage and through this pain?
What's the benefit to it? And there was of course no, no real they just looked at me with deer in headlights look. And you know I took the tough decision to resign my reputation was shattered. I was painted as a dictator. I was painted as corrupt.
I was painted as misogynistic and so forth. And it really hindered me. And I, I can only compare it to the way I verbalize it is if Maslow's pyramid, there, there's a top level and a bottom level. I essentially went from the top level to the bottom and In 24 hours.
And it was quite a shock, I brought my family to the states. Lived from Airbnb to a friend's house. A friend's house for a little bit while I got my bearings going. And, finally stabilized COVID came in, which was a another situation of course that we all a different headline, at least.
Different. Yes. And then a year they investigated me and everything independent. And then, a year and a half after the independent investigation, they demonstrate that the communications, the chat communications were modified, edited and non original. And that there was no crime or corruption or intent of crime or corruption in it and so but of course that takes page 26 instead of the front page and I thought I was done.
But here's the interesting last piece of it You know, I started doing my science and working but there was a special election to elect our congressional delegates in congress And in 2001, and I was hearing people that people wanted to write me in, I wasn't, I hadn't gone back to Puerto Rico in a while and so forth, and it started getting, but writings just don't happen particularly if you're not, if you're not campaigning or doing anything.
And, I thought it was cute and nice and I was I felt, I felt the support of some of the, my old supporters and so forth. But then one one day my and I hadn't spoken and my wife says you need to tell Beatrice says, I don't know what you're gonna do, but you need to tell something to your people They're expecting to hear something.
So about two days before the elections. I said look I have no intent of doing anything. But if you elect me, then, of course, I'll be honored to serve. And but in one condition, I said, I'm not going to charge. I'm not going to, I'm not going to take a paycheck for it for a variety of reasons.
And then, what do you know? May 21st comes around. It's an election and people just come in and write in my name, and it's a hard name to write in and I got elected to be their congressional one of their congressional representatives which in a certain sense, I'm very grateful and I was able to be their representative up until past December with some other colleagues but what it, Demonstrated to me is that a lot of the people that supported me and that sort of got o under the guise of the cancel culture and everything that happened they, their response was like, I don't care what happens.
And the, the anecdotal stories is that people would just go into the voting booth and just say, where do I vote for Ricky, they didn't even know what they were voting for. They were. Where do I put where do I put his name? And lo and behold, there was that sort of secondary response to that unfortunate finish.
But that slowly but surely has gotten, has helped me mitigate, I don't know. I should congratulate you or feel sorry for you that you're back in politics, but that's, I'm back out again. So it might term ended in December. Now I'm a little bit of an observer, but it was it was fun.
It was great. And doing it, doing it for free. And just because of the original the original theme that brought me into politics, which was statehood. It was essentially A seat designed to, to lobby for status. So I'm very grateful for it. And it was a great opportunity.
And again, thankful for the people that, that saw beyond everything and gave me another chance. It's a story of redemption, isn't it? Yeah, it's it's hard because you get to a dark point. You get to a dark when all of this happened I you know, I would wake up in the morning and I My mode is operating people can say anything about me in policy or as a person or whatnot But what everybody I think agreed almost unanimously was that I was a hard worker, right?
I had a lot of I would wake up my mother's operandi as I woke up at 3 30 in the morning. I turned the light on my office. It would shine a beacon in San Juan and everybody knew that the governor was working. So if he was working, then the staff have to be there early in the morning as well. And so on and so forth.
So Mhm. Unfortunately, when I stepped out of office that clock still ticked and I would wake up, and I would draw things and make orders, automatically to realize that I had no, no orders to send anybody, and that was the first phase. And then the second phase was after, there's a point where.
Literally Carl, there, there were astronauts asking from space that, that I should resign. There was a very well orchestrated operation. And I have to ask myself, am I the villain? Am I the bad guy? And I think you said the word it was orchestrated like, and then you see that in, in a lot in politics, you and I talked about this personally, it is a.
It is. You mix in the, the party systems and then you layer on media on top of that and it'll eat you alive. And it did, it was a great, it was a great process because it was a process for me for self reflection and after plenty of self reflection and even writing a book and my book has a lot of that self reflection in it.
It's a long one. But, I came out with the following thought, which is very anti anti intuitive for a politician and it is, validation is internal. I know after evaluating everything that I did, that everything, mistakes and all, everything that I did at every point during my tenure was with the best interests of the people in Puerto Rico at hand.
And yeah, again, like you can debate me on the merits, on the issues, on the results. I will gladly take on those debates but what I won't accept is the, the intent, my intent was direct and clear and that's what I have, and that's what I own and that's what motivates me to keep on going because I know that what I did, the intentions were right whether some of the results were not that's to be debated.
Okay, that's really brave. Yeah, thank you for speaking that way This is an awesome question. Go for it. But yeah, I do, but I'm not really going to expect a full answer. And this would necessitate us probably if you really want to get into something like this, because it relates to the whole Puerto Rico statehood thing.
I don't want to take any more of your time tonight, but maybe another discussion later, but two minutes or less Puerto Rico statehood act 60. How does all that stuff come together? And Act 60 for our listeners is a very favorable treatment or tax law in Puerto Rico that In yours to the advantage of expatriates who relocate to Puerto Rico that allows, those dreaded billionaires and mega millionaires to get out of certain domestic taxes.
I love it personally because I'm a tax attorney. But how does how do you reconcile that? Or how is that affected by this pursuit of statehood? So let As I told you, I'm a fair event state holder. That's my top priority, but I'm also the writer and the signer of Act 60. I signed it actually a month before I resigned.
Act 60 encompasses the work of previous governors that were amazing in that, and of course, but the idea was to create a an incentives code that would give more of these benefits and would leverage them. Okay? How does it work? And this is and I'll stick it to two minutes.
But essentially, because we're a territory, we don't pay federal income taxes on the personal side and on some companies sites as well. So what we did was for to attract people that are builders, developers, great minds. To the island because we thought we have a lot of things to add. We gave him a preferential four percent tax treatment and a whole host of I'm summarizing it and zero percent on the federal side So that you would come and be a resident of the island and the expectation is that not immediately But as people start coming in they will create these ecosystems of Awesome That will develop in a way, you know going to atlas shrug you're bringing in the talent And then you're creating that mixing pot for them to start thinking.
How do we make this place better? Plus you got all their money there, right? Yeah, exactly and it's starting to happen the projects that are being discussed is just sometimes the executive action in puerto rico is a little bit slow But it's starting to happen and then so the answer to that, how does it conflict?
Do I believe it? It conflicts. I believe it does not. And here is why. Every statehood every territory that has become a state, it's not just a cookie cutter agreement. There are certain principles, of course, but everything else is a negotiation. When certain states became, I think when Utah became a state, there was some debt considerations or some land consideration.
There's all of these elements. And also polygamy, they couldn't practice polygamy anymore. And then there's Alaska, Alaska has got some things too. Yeah, there's a lot of particularities. And what I've said, because this has been a staple, it's look, once statehood comes at 60 is a contract.
So contracts go beyond statute. And what we're saying is sure. Act 60 could end after statehood, but not for those that are already within Act 60. Those would be grandfathered in. That would be part of our negotiation, so that we can keep you have some mass immigration right before. Yeah, it's bad enough as it is right now.
I'm not bad. In a very good way, there's a Positive influx of it would be a nightmare. Real estate prices would go like that. They're already up and they're going to keep on going up. And I'm telling you, it is an exciting I've always, my vision of Puerto Rico was when I tried to communicate is I wanted to put a Rico that was open for business.
I wanted a Puerto Rico that was a center of innovation. I saw Puerto Rico and I still see this value as the connector of the Americas just because we're part of the United States. We're dead smack in the middle of the Americas. We have Latin American culture and upbringing. We're part of the United States.
We are a security strategic position for the United States as well. And I wanted to blend all of those elements to to add value to the offering that, that Puerto Rico had having that. That that offering I believe that Puerto Rico is in prime position to become a state I think it's true today.
I was recently in canadian, television and they called upon me because of President Trump's comment about Canada becoming the 51st state and, I argued with them about it. I said, look, this is very different. Of course the main difference is that Puerto Ricans want it and Canadians don't, number one, so democracy should rule.
But number two, more nuance is that Puerto Rico is already has all of the federal infrastructure. In the island, we're already part of the United States, we're already citizen so when I see Trump, and this is me reading the tea leaves from afar, but I see Trump looking at this as an expansionist term.
In a sense, right? And if that's your mindset, what better way and quicker way to start your expansion than with a territory of the United States that already has the federal structures in it, that already has U. S. citizens, and by the way, the last 12 years has had four plebiscites that have chosen statehood for that.
And, very nicely would round the Gulf of the Americas on the There you go! That you are a politician. 100%. You haven't shaken it. I'm sorry to loop that in as your closing argument is, Trump pretty well. Yeah. And the last thing I'll say is. I had this conversation with President Trump when I interacted with him the several times that I did there's one interesting exchange about statehood that I have, he would invite me.
I had a good relationship with him for a period of time. I was the only Democratic governor that he would invite to speak with the other Republican governors and himself, and he would bring the press and so forth. And we had an exchange And so I said, we want statehood, and he replied when you give me two Republican senators, I'll think about it.
But then I took him on the side and I said, look, Mr. President you want to make America great again? What better way to make it greater than by expanding? And by the way, all expansionist presidents Are considered great presidents and that was my closing statement back then fell on deaf ears, but it might not i'm hopeful that it might So we're going to blame you or we're going to give you credit for the gulf of america And greenland and canada and panama and This is awesome, it's been really great talking to you absolutely Yeah, this is a real joy, Ricky.
We look forward to talking to you anytime. And if you're ever in Colorado, please look us up. We'll take you out for a nice lunch and show you around to show you the mountains that are up here as opposed to the beaches where you're used to being from. Beautiful. I love Colorado.
I really do. So I will take you up. We will gladly give you a first class treatment. It'd be a lot of fun. Thank you so much for your time and these great stories. And I know there's a lot more where these came from. Thank you. Thank you, Carl. Thank you, Nate. Nate, anything from you? Oh, you can close this out.
Create a beautiful day. Thank you for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed the discussion and the information we shared. We hope you enjoy the information contained in today's podcast and find it useful. We hope you'll join us again next time as we explore new areas of interest to our listeners or current issues we believe are important.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe so you are notified when future episodes are released and also share it with a friend that you think would benefit. If you'd like to meet with a member of the Expert Network Team or have a request for a special topic you'd like to have us discuss on the podcast, submit those requests to info at expertnetworkteam.
com. That's I N F O at expertnetworkteam. com. Thank you for joining us and have a great day. Thank you for listening to this podcast. We want to remind you that listening to this podcast does not establish a client professional relationship with any of the professional firms represented, including guests, nor does it constitute legal investment accounting or other advice of a fiduciary nature.
The views expressed are those of the professionals only. Investment advisor services may be provided through A& I Wealth Management. Securities may be provided through Genios Wealth Management.