Press Pass Restored (09/24)

0:00This is an I Heart Podcast. Guaranteed Human. A judge has granted them a temporary restraining order. So they're back covering the White House. And with that, I want to go to the live line right now. Royal Oaks is with ABC News. He is a legal analyst and he is joining us live. Royal, good to have you on board. Appreciate your time. Tell us what exactly does this mean. Decided that through those outlets, CNN and others, do have a right to get access to the White House, the press room. Now, they don't have a right to things like the Oval Office and Air Force One.

1:02But in terms of general credentialing, it was a victory in terms of being able to get in the White House. And so now they're back in. This is only for 14 days. It's a temporary restraining order. And so in October, the judge will revisit this and decide whether their rights continue for the next year or so in case it takes that long. So this matter to get to trial. So my understanding in all of this is it also involves a hard press pass, which they use at the White House. And this is something that if you cover, I would imagine, the president or the Daily White House briefing on a daily basis that you get this hard press pass. And that's what they are looking for to get back. Yeah. So essentially, there's a big kerfuffle over the fact that nowadays in our digital era, you've got podcasters, you've got influencers. We saw this with the Lindsey Clancy trial and Massachusetts. A lot of folks are trying to get access to the court and have various press privileges, even though they weren't exactly ABC, CBS or NBC. So that's a separate issue.

2:03But yeah, if you're one of the usual suspects and you have the hard pass, these folks now are entitled to go back in and cover the White House. And it was kind of unanimous among all the networks. One of the might consider on left to center or right to center the network to expressing the view that really politics shouldn't come into play. And we don't want to be wondering if we're going to get kicked out depending on the politics of a different president. Right. And on that note, by the way, I don't know if a lot of folks are aware of this, but you go back about 16 years or so somewhere in that neighborhood. When President Barack Obama was in office, at one point in time, his administration excluded Fox News from some White House interviews if I'm not mistaken. So this is not without precedent. It sounds like you're absolutely right. It was in the wrong manual. The tough talking chief of staff for Obama at the time. It was his idea. He said, Fox News, they're not really reporters. They just are into politics and he tried to exclude them from a pool. But there was no court action. The Obama administration backed down after all of the networks, CNN, Fox, everybody else decided to join in solidarity.

3:10And then more recently eight years ago, you remember Jim Acosta of CNN, he was kicked out by Trump. And the same judge who ruled today, who is a Trump appointee, by the way, federal district court in the Washington DC, he ruled in favor of CNN and Acosta. On the same basis, he ruled today, namely, not that it was necessarily a free press right under the first amendment, but the fifth amendment has a due process clause that says, if you're going to yank somebody's alleged first amendment rights, you got to have a hearing, got to go to a judge, let them express themselves. Trump administration didn't do that. So that was the specific basis for today's ruling, saying that CNN political, political and the others get back into the White House at least for now. So I'm not a legal analyst and you clearly are, but I have to tell you that when President Trump initially did this, kicks CNN and MSNOW and political out, the very first thing I said to somebody was, well, that's going to get overturned like almost immediately. Everybody saw this coming, right? I mean, you had to think President Trump knew exactly how this would turn out.

4:12No, you're absolutely right. I think you should register for law school. You're probably going to be top of your class. And you know, some people, cynics were speculating, they were saying, well, Trump knows he's probably going to lose, but he kind of likes the idea that the national conversation is steering toward liberal media bias, that way people aren't talking about the war, the economy, Donald Trump's personality. Of course, that's just the cynical viewpoint. Some people have. But I mean, look, the more they talk about that and let's face it, these these cable outlets, they were consumed with this story over the course of the last few days, which means they were not talking about high gas prices and economic issues and affordability. So I mean, I think that that's that that analysis is spot on. Yeah, that's part of it at the other angle is Donald Trump's department of justice tried to play the national security card. And you said, what's that all about? Well, there was an argument that CNN and others have reported fake news and they've been guilty of leaks and are actually threatening our national security. The judge said that's a crock. There is no evidence and no proof that actually there's a national security problem with having a CNN reporter in the White House. So that argument went nowhere.

5:22Okay, if you could try to time this out on a timeline for us, what does this look like in the months ahead weeks ahead? Before all of this is settled on a permanent basis, do you suppose? Yeah, so first off, the temporary restraining order is actually not appealable. So even if Trump wanted to try to work his way up to the Supreme Court, he can't do it for the next couple of weeks. In October, they'll be hearing on whether the injunction should not be temporary, but for a year or two pending trial. And if Trump loses there, he does have a right to go to the circuit court and then the Supreme Court. But you know, there really aren't the cases that would support his position. So I imagine he's probably going to abandon it. The midterms are going to be upon us. And I doubt that he'll make this a long term fight. Very good. Royal. Thank you so much for your time. That's Royal Oaks. He's ABC News legal analyst giving us the very latest on what's going on at the White House and those covering the White House. If you are not familiar with Christopher Rufo, we're going to learn more about him very, very soon. He's an investigative reporter. And he and some of his colleagues have issued a new report that is really revealing about the amount of money that taxpayers in the state of California are paying into a welfare system for illegal aliens.

6:32What they're getting, how much we're paying. We're going to get into that straight ahead coming up here on the John Cobalt show. My name is Sam Shane. I'm filling in for John today. You're listening to John Cobalt on demand from KFI AM640. And here on KFI AM640 where we are live everywhere on the IHR radio app. I am Sam Shane and for John Cobalt. And the John Cobalt show and it's so good to be here. A number of different stories conflicting stories on the economy that I want to share with you. Some highly encouraging others maybe not so much from the wine industry to the coffee industry to AI. So I want to get into all of that in just a second. Some of these new developments. But before we do that, I want to start with an interesting investigation by a guy named Christopher Rufo. If you don't follow him. I recommend you do. I think he does some very good work. He's an investigative reporter with an outfit called City Journal. And he and a couple of his colleagues. They've produced a new report.

7:37And this report shows how California has created this shadow welfare system for illegal aliens. They get things like free housing and cash and healthcare, food, phones, college tuition, even car insurance. And it's costing taxpayers in the state of California more than $10 billion a year. So I'm going to play for you in just a second here an audio clip from this report that they have produced on this. And then I want to get into some deeper detail of an article that they have written for the City Journal, which goes into extensive explanation about what it is they did. How they came to these numbers, their conclusion. And what it means for those of us here in California as opposed to other states. So here's a portion of the report they produced. This is a brand new smartphone. And here in Los Angeles, the government is giving them away to undocumented migrants for free. No proof of citizenship. And the phones are only the beginning in the past decade. The California state government has built a shadow welfare system for the undocumented. It costs the state billions. They're giving away free food, cash, housing, healthcare, college tuition, even car insurance. No questions asked.

8:58We wanted to see exactly how this system worked. So we went to the welfare office here in Los Angeles. They told us that many state welfare programs do not require American citizenship. And some like the cash assistance program for immigrants, which provides nearly $14,000 a year in cash are for migrants only. If you know where to look, the system isn't exactly a secret. The government is advertising it. No social security number. No problem. And governor knew some brags about it. We only stayed in America, providing universal healthcare regardless of existing additional ability to pay and your immigration status. I know how offensive that is to people and I get how controversial this is an outrage. California families are working long hours. Depleting their savings and taking out record amounts of debt to survive. Well, the government takes from their paycheck and hands out free everything to migrants who have no legal right to be here.

10:00This is not going on in other states. This is not at all applicable in any other states. So Christopher Rufo produced this report along with two of his college Kenneth Shrupp and Austin Huffard. And I will read for you now the article associated with this report that they wrote and these are just this is just a portion of the article. They write to begin it. California runs the nation's largest welfare system devoting more than $180 billion annually to food, healthcare and other programs for the poor and downtrodden to sustain the arrangement. The state imposes the nation's highest tax rates. They go on to say a little bit later on we visited four public services offices as you just heard by the way in that clip in Southern California. Each of which admitted that illegal aliens can enroll in public welfare programs or receive benefits on their children's behalf in total. California taxpayers spent at least $11 billion subsidizing illegal immigrants in the last fiscal year.

11:04Later on they write all told a family of five in California with two illegal alien parents to us born children and one illegal alien grandparent can receive public services worth more than $100,000 per year. And they conclude their article with these two graphs between health insurance cash transfers and other programs. California's shadow welfare system doles out generous benefits to illegal immigrants at the time of the year. The state's income to illegal immigrants at taxpayers expense ordinary Californians mean time are depleting their savings working long hours and taking on tons of debt simply to pay the bills and they conclude by saying under Gavin Newsom's social contract working Americans must not only contend with rising taxes and ballooning living costs but also bear the burden of financing benefits for illegal immigrants and their families. Citizenship establishes who qualifies for tax payer funded benefits in California citizenship merely determines who pays.

12:11So again, this Christopher Rufo does some really good investigative work. You want to check him out. You can find him on X on a number of social media platforms. It's our UFO. And again, they are with city journal and I just wanted to bring that to your attention. That's a big story in my estimation and one that's just not going to get a whole ton of attention by a lot of mainstream media outlets. A couple of interesting economic stories. Number one Starbucks today announced that they're closing 250 stores nationwide. Okay, that's a big number. But in total, they have some 18,000. Stores across the country, right? Star, you know, the old joke Starbucks in every corner, right? Well, they're cutting back. So they're going to downsize that. And then there's this story on the AI boom on track now to become the largest single industry infrastructure build out in more than a century according to new estimates by the Brookings institution Wall Street Journal reporting. There are lead economists on this says the projects that total investment in data centers and related AI infrastructure will reach $10 trillion between 2025 and 2032.

13:21Averaging 3.5% GDP a year. That's a big, big number. So the AI build out is real. It rivals. And in fact, surpasses virtually every other major infrastructure project build out in the history of the US ever. Like real roads, electricity. It surpasses all of them by a large margin. That's what AI is doing to us economically. So we got a lot more for you coming back here on the John Cobalt show. My name is Sam Shane. I'm sitting in for John. Obviously today I want to play for you an interesting clip from the president of Argentine, a Javier Miele went to the United Nations had some pretty critical things to say about the UN. So we're going to roll out those comments for you straight ahead. You're listening to John Cobalt on demand from KFI AM640. This is KFI AM640 live everywhere on the I hard radio at my name is Sam Shane. I'm in for John Cobalt today. It's good to be here.

14:26Just looking at some comments made by former Disney animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg is a big supporter of artificial intelligence. When it comes to Hollywood, particularly animation. That's a interesting thing to say that he posted and I want to get into that. I also want to talk a little bit about what the chairman of the Republican National Committee thinks about their chances of taking both the House and the Senate in the midterms. Feeling pretty good about that. We'll talk more about that in a moment as well. A little bit of feedback. I want to get to you from one of the listeners. So there's a lot to pour into. So I also want to get to this clip right now right off the top. This is from the president of Argentina Javier Miele and he went to the United Nations spoke before the General Assembly in New York. He had a fiery speech and he called the body of the United Nations. This is a direct quote useless and made up of fatally arrogant parasites. I mean he had some sharp words for them. Here's just a portion of his speech.

15:29It's become a useless organization. Only purpose is to sustain a cast of faithly arrogant parasites mask a rating as well. I would remind them of what my side. Good people do not think about controlling the lives of their fellow human beings. Those who were supposed to guarantee collectives of a human rights failed at that. They allowed chaos, violence, and international terrorism to flourish. The alleged offenders of human rights sheltered blood-firsted detainees and regimes that stone women in the streets. They assist in a bout of against Israel while remaining silent in the face of Islamic terrorism and the genocide of Christians in Africa. And that in and of itself the last thing that we just heard there is befuddling to me curious it's mystifying in that how is it the United Nations can be so quiet on radical Islamists and what they are doing to Christians in Africa.

16:29And if you do just a little bit of digging you can find out more about that far too many mainstream outlets are not reporting on that story. It's very significant. It's highly troubling. And he just said look as a body of the United Nations can't pick and choose and that's what you've been doing and he's not the only one by the way. Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janssa also accused the United Nations of applying double standards to global conflicts arguing that the international community's focus on Gaza. Has overshadowed Russia's war in Ukraine. Others humanitarian crisis. So he's not alone. Those criticisms are shared by at least those two gentlemen and a lot of others. But we heard about them publicly. By the way President Trump may visit Slovenia. That's the homeland of First Lady Melania Trump. So it sounds like they may be going there. So keep your eyes peeled on that. At a caller. Listener call in and leave a message about how much he enjoys living in Arizona.

17:31Apparently not everybody who has left California for Arizona feels that way at least according to this caller. I was thinking about what you were saying or one of your callers called in about our zone which is nice that you do have callers calling it because John doesn't usually let that happen. But they were saying how great it is there. I have three brother-in-law that moved from California to there and I absolutely hate it. It's so hard to get used to 120 degrees, 117 degrees and you have to be inside all the time. So it's difficult to... I'm a beach person so. Well look. Number one. John runs his own show. I take calls from time to time just because I like to hear from folks. That's just how I roll. Yeah, you know what? I said this about California. Especially I talk to friends all across the country. I mean are there issues where you sit back and go, okay is it worth it? I see so many people who have decided to pick up and leave for a variety of reasons whether it's affordability or what have youed high taxes, red tape, you name it right, homeless.

18:35I mean, I think we get it. But boy it is a great place isn't it? I mean it is a beautiful... You drive around this state and you're like wow this is a pretty remarkable state, pretty remarkable place to live. Jeffrey Katzenberg I want to get into what he had to say, okay? Because he is a fan of AI. He went to his verified ex account and he made an argument in favor of using AI in animation. He sympathizes with those who might lose their jobs to AI and he doesn't hide the fact that job losses is what all the hysterical fear mongering around AI is really all about. So he does acknowledge this. But he goes back in history and talks about how there has been progress from a technical standpoint, mechanical standpoint in so many industries and we've adapted. He talks about thousands of musicians all over the country, gainfully employed for nearly two decades to bring music to silent films.

19:37And he said you know there were people who were able to get that done. And he talks more about what happened in the industry. He believes that AI animation can cut the time and the cost of producing world class animation by as much as 90%. So here's just a couple of lines that he wrote. Hollywood needs to accept that AI is not going away. The energy they are spending trying to make it disappear is energy they are not spending deciding the terms on which it will exist. And the terms he writes are everything. Then he writes and writes. The artists who learn to wield these new instruments will do things the engineers never dreamed of. They always have Edison invented the motion picture but made terrible movies. It took Chaplin Lloyd Keaton and so many others to make movies emotional. Now the canvas is about to expand yet again. We should decide now that we intend to paint on it.

20:41Yeah, well to AI so many of us have no idea which way it's going on so many levels right. It's it's been a highly interesting discussion. No question about it. Spend some time recently talking with some folks in the wine industry and I want to talk to you more about what they're sharing with me. It's been a very difficult time in the wine industry in California. So some of that will be coming up when we come back in our next segment. And I also want to roll out some fresh new audio for you. Another piece of investigative work done in this time, the Great Northwest near Seattle. Another Somali daycare fraud investigation has surfaced will get you the details on that one coming up straight ahead. You're listening to John Cobalt on demand from KFI AM640. This is KFI AM640. We're live everywhere on the I Hard Radio. My name is Sam Shane and for John Cobalt today. I mentioned this a moment ago.

21:44Just wanted to share it with you. The Republican National Committee chair is named Joe Grooters. He's feeling pretty good about their chances as Republicans in the midterm said this week. He expects his party to hold on to its majorities in both chambers of Congress during the midterms. He is predicting the GOP will claim 220 seats in the house and 53 seats in the Senate said in an interview. Listen, I would say bet on us. If you look at what we have done over the last two years, we have better candidates across the country in both the Senate and House races and we have more resources to spend. That's what he said to the Hill. He's feeling pretty good. I've seen some polling, which indicates that Democrats are doing pretty well. So it could be all over the board. I want to talk about a report that is out on more alleged fraud this time in Seattle, Washington in that metro area in a second. This story out of the California post could have an impact on Southern California. This hurricane.

22:46Polo, hurricane polo, briefly reached a category five maximum sustained winds of 155 miles an hour. Now makes it a category four. It's hitting portions of Mexico now. Could hit Southern California. We are told by the weekend into early next week. That's according to a number of the predictions being made by forecasters right now. Storm swells could produce life threatening surf and rip currents and coastal flooding potentially in some of the areas that could be impacted. Let's see, acu weather expects polo eventually turn toward a Baja California peninsula. This is a possible landfall Sunday into Monday. That's a possibility. This is according to one of the forecasters textbook El Niño. The impacts will be pretty textbook strong tropical development. California and I currently expected to take not currently expected to take a direct hit bot. This storm could still be felt in Southern California on the coast in a number of locations.

23:51Let's see, they say San Diego orange and Los Angeles counties could see four to seven foot swells and dangerous rip currents in the days to come. So keep your eyes peeled on that. I'm going to get into that a little bit later on. I have some audio from another forecaster on this. It's amazing how some of these people who follow hurricanes and they fly planes right into the middle of the hurricane. And they get information like temperatures and wind speeds and all kinds of really important information for forecasters as they fly right into the eye of the storm literally. Okay, more daycare fraud to report this time in Seattle where millions of taxpayer dollars are going to what appears to be Somali families. In some cases, these daycares have no children. Does this sound familiar? Have no children. They've been receiving up to $40,000 a month in childcare fees from taxpayers. So you're about to hear from Katie Davis court who is a reporter with post millennial. She investigated Somali daycares in the Seattle Metro region.

24:54And she says uncovered more than $5 million of potential misuse of taxpayer funds. Here's a clip from just a short video that she posted online. You saw the scandal explode in Minnesota and now the same pattern is unfolding in Seattle. I set out to investigate Somali run daycares and what I found was staggering millions of dollars of taxpayer money has been dished out. But there appears to be a few problems. When I knocked, no one was home. Doors slammed in my face. Why won't you talk the landlines were dead? That's just a portion of some of the reporting that she did in Seattle, Washington sounds a lot like what we heard out of Minnesota, right? And when Minnesota happened, you knew that the investigations in California would not be far behind and they weren't. The question becomes who is and who is not reporting these storylines. And that gets to a very interesting article in the Washington Examiner today.

26:00Talking about Vice President Vance's fraud task force. And if you rely on Google for your information to be informed, you might want to rethink that. According to a new analysis, dozens of people, of course, thanks to Vice President J.D. Vance's fraud task force have been charged with abuses hundreds of billions of dollars of wasteful payments have been halted. But people who rely on Google news for their headlines probably wouldn't know it or notice because of this analysis. This analysis of months of stories found that none of the task force 51 key anti-fraud actions were among the top 20 listings promoted each morning by Google. Those include the largest healthcare takedown in history, suspension of billions of dollars in Medicaid and healthcare funding, and the removal of more than 1,000 California hospices from Medicare. Do you remember this story? 1,000 California hospices removed.

27:02And Google didn't even make it one of their top stories. So this is according to a report by an outfit called Media Research Center, I'm RC. If you don't follow them, I recommend them. I do. They do good work. The president of MRC, his name is David Bozell. He has accused Google of giving Americans an incomplete picture of the Trump administration's anti-fraud efforts ahead of the midterms. This is a direct quote. He says between February and August, major news outlets published more than 257 stories on these multi-billion dollar crackdowns, yet not one appeared in Google News's top morning feed. Not one. 257 were out there. He says a 257 to zero blackout is not a minor editorial quirk. Google owes it to its users and explanation for how a news platform with this much power managed to miss every single one. Isn't that something? Yeah, I've said from time to time it again, you have to be very, very careful where you go to get your news and you have to sprinkle it.

28:08You've got to spread it out and go to a number of different sources. Look, the good information is out there. You just got to go look for it. But according to this analysis that MRC is now reporting, if you're going to Google, you're not getting the whole story. You're just not. And that's prevalent at other news organizations as well as you are probably well aware. This is an interesting storyline too, what Karen Bass, the LA Mayor Karen Bass had to say in this interview with a podcast about how a Republican cannot win in California. And then she goes on in the interview and criticizes the British accent of Republican Steve Hilton who's running for governor. So and by the way, Hilton responded to that and we've got both those pieces of audio for you. So I do want to get into that coming up in just a moment and get into some of the latest polling numbers in the race for governor and the race for LA mayor. So we've got new numbers on that a lot to get to coming up in the final hour of the John Cobalt show. My name is Sam Shane. I'm filling in for John. It's a pleasure to be here on KFI AM 640. We are live everywhere on the I heart radio app.

29:15You've been listening to the John Cobalt show podcast. You can always hear the show live on KFI AM 640 from 3 to 6 p.m. every Monday through Friday. And of course anytime on demand on the I heart radio app. KFI AM 640. More stimulating talk.