December 29, 2025 • 32 mins
Hour 1 of today’s Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, guest-hosted by John Kobylt from KFI Los Angeles, delivers an unfiltered deep dive into California’s ongoing crisis and the political future of Governor Gavin Newsom, who is widely viewed as the leading Democratic contender for the 2028 presidential race. Kobylt paints a vivid picture of California’s decline, describing how once-idyllic cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Santa Monica have become plagued by homelessness, rampant drug addiction, and untreated mental illness. He explains how Newsom’s “Housing First” policy has failed, pouring billions into housing projects without addressing root causes like addiction and psychiatric care, while corruption siphons off much of the funding. Kobylt also highlights California’s one-party rule, noting decades of Democratic dominance and the absence of meaningful opposition, which has led to unchecked policies and severe COVID lockdowns. He warns listeners about Newsom’s character, illustrating his tendency to lie and shift narratives through a detailed account of the Palisades Fire disaster. Kobylt recounts how Newsom falsely claimed to be on the phone with President Joe Biden during a confrontation with a distraught mother, later changing his story multiple times. The segment exposes further mismanagement, including state interference that allowed a small fire to reignite into a massive blaze—all to protect an endangered plant species—resulting in thousands of homes destroyed. The hour closes with Kobylt’s personal experience during the fire, describing a complete breakdown of public services that forced residents to hire armed security for protection. He underscores California’s skyrocketing gas prices—averaging $4.29 per gallon compared to $2.23 in Oklahoma—driven by climate-change-driven tax policies that disproportionately hurt working families. Kobylt promises more revelations in Hour 2, including an interview with Katie Grimes of California Globe to discuss Newsom’s national ambitions and the systemic corruption behind California’s decline. Key Topics Covered in Hour 1: • Gavin Newsom’s rise as the top Democratic candidate for 2028 • California’s homelessness crisis and failed “Housing First” policy • Rampant drug addiction and untreated mental illness in major cities • One-party rule and lack of accountability in California politics • The Palisades Fire scandal: lies, mismanagement, and environmental policy failures • Personal account of lawlessness and survival during the fire • California’s highest-in-the-nation gas prices and climate tax burdens This hour is a must-listen for anyone tracking Gavin Newsom’s political trajectory, California’s progressive policies, and their real-world consequences.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to today's edition of The Clay Travis and Buck
Sexton Show podcast. Welcome, how are you to the Clay
Travis and Buck Sexton Show. I'm John Cobalt filling in
for Claying Buck today and I want to thank them
for giving me the opportunity. I'm normally on Can't Find
Los Angeles every afternoon doing a radio show and have
(00:21):
been out here for a long time and it's really
a lot of fun to be able to be on
Clay and Bucks Network today. And what I wanted to
talk about, and we've got a lot of material here
is since Kevin Newsom has become undisputably the top Democratic
candidate for the twenty twenty eight race, he is he
(00:45):
is a piece of work, and there's a lot of
detail that you probably haven't heard about because I don't
think the national media has covered him very much. And
when you've probably seen all the video and all the
news stories, especially on Fox News about what a disaster
California is, and when you see that kind of coverage,
(01:07):
I always wonder, I'm sure you do, it's like, all right,
are they taking things out of context? Are they cherry picking?
Is this one isolated block or town. Is it really
like this in much of the state, And the answer
is yes. What you're seeing on television the way California
is covered, it is that bad, especially if you're in
(01:27):
the big cities. It cannot be overstated just how difficult
life is in places like Los Angeles and Santa Monica
and in San Francisco. It is a mess. It's a
mess coming from Gavin Newsom's policies. It is a mess
coming from local policies, city councils and mayors. It is
(01:48):
a progressive nightmare out here. And I want to tell
you just a brief rundown, because whenever you utter an
opinion these days, people want to dismiss saying, oh, well,
you're just blank, and they give you a label. Oh
you're just conservative, or you're just a Republican, or you're
just some kind of hater. And then I always think
(02:10):
it's like, no, no, this is real life here in California.
This is what normal people who are not overly political
talk about all day. This is the only thing non political,
non partisan, ordinary people talk about. Because life can be
really difficult and frustrating. And so when I was a kid,
I grew up in New Jersey in clebrig New Jersey,
(02:33):
and you know, you know, the winter's in the Northeast,
They're long, they're cold, sunsets at four point thirty in
the afternoon. I'm eight years old, and the ray of
hope when you're in the middle of winter, let's say
in December, is I turned on the television and I
would see late afternoon football games from the West Coast.
I'd see games from Los Angeles games, San Diego Chargers,
(02:56):
the Oakland Raiders, and I'd see sunshine right because there's
three hours earlier, sunshine, people in short sleeves, beautiful women
in the stands, and I'm thinking, wow, this and this
is an eight I thought, well, this is magical, this
is wonderful. And you know, then there was the Rose
Parade every year, so it buried in my head. It's like,
(03:18):
when I grew up, I want to go live in California.
That was the dream because it was so wonderful. And
eventually I fast forward, maybe about twenty years, my wife
and I got to move to Los Angeles. I got
a job offer from KFI back in the nineties, and
I thought, well, this is exactly where I wanted to
(03:39):
be and we drove around our first three weeks here
before I went on the air, and we went everywhere
from the Mexican border through San Diego and San Francisco.
San Francisco at the time, I almost dropped dead because
of its beauty. I thought, this is the most gorgeous
city I've ever seen in my life. La was fun
and exciting, the beaches, the weather, and you know, eventually,
(04:04):
well we made a home. We made a home here
and raised three kids, and then about ten years ago
everything started going to hell. And it was gradual. You know,
it's first you don't you shrug it off, saying, well,
all right, they'll take care of it. It's a bad policy,
bad idea. Let me start with the homelessness, because the
(04:26):
homelessness has infected and overrun the city of Los Angeles,
the city of Santa Monica, which used to be a jewel,
San Francisco, of course, Sacramento. And it's a policy from
the top on down where most of the homeless are
not people quote down on their luck, who lost their
(04:49):
job a couple of weeks ago and can't make a
rent payment. Most of them are are drug addicts, just
crazed drug addicts. The rest of them are mental patients.
It's as if they opened a mental institution and let
everybody run free. Now, the drug addiction can make you
(05:12):
mentally ill. The mentally ill people turned to drugs, so
it mixes together. I saw a UCLA study where three
quarters of the homeless they estimated were mentally ill and
three quarters were drug addicts. Well that's one hundred and
fifty percent of the homeless. So that's what's going on.
And you can't fix most of them, at least not
(05:33):
by I don't know, opening up a retail store clinic
on the street. All these people need intensive treatment. They
need to be in beds, they need to be locked up,
they need long term therapy, they need to be on medications.
And instead, the official policy of Gavin Newsom is is
(05:57):
housing first, and it's the same thing with Karen vast
beara Los Angeles. Housing first, which means nothing is done
for their addictions, nothing is done for their mental illness.
They have thrown billions of dollars to build apartments and
and all kinds of shelters, except all you're doing is
(06:19):
you're taking the crazy person or the drug addicted person,
and you're putting them inside and then they wander out
during the day to buy their drugs and to act crazy.
And let me tell you, these people are terrifying. My
wife and I have been chased by people with sticks
running down the street screaming. We have been chased in
(06:41):
our car. We have witnessed people just You'll be walking
down the street, just going to the drug store, the
grocery store, and somebody will drop their pants and defecate
right in front of you. These are not anomalies. You
go to Hollywood, you go to Venice, you go to
places that used to be the tourism capitals of America,
(07:03):
and it's mind boggling what's allowed. And everybody calls and
everybody complains, and they have a new policy. No matter
who you call, they don't respond. They don't answer the phone,
they don't answer the email, they don't answer the door.
(07:23):
They don't care because I don't know. I think so
many people have checked out that they know they're all
going to get re elected. It is the strangest phenomenon.
I noticed things starting to change. Like I said, about
ten years ago, I also noticed how things changed with
people responding to issues and taking action. And it was
(07:44):
about the time the smartphone came out, and I actually
think people are so absorbed by their smartphones and so
absorbed by being on the internet and scrolling social media
and scrolling texting, that they have kind of lost connection
with their neighborhood and their and they're just letting things happen.
They've given up on forcing a Gavin Newsomer or Karen
(08:08):
Bass to do anything about it. Oh and by the way,
on the housing first, it's extremely expensive, it takes an
extremely long time, and there's very little housing that's built.
Most of the homeless money is stolen. And I'll explain
that to you coming up in a few minutes. It
is and there's one party rule. We've had a democratic
(08:33):
governor now ever since Arnold Schwarzenegger, so it's about fifteen
sixteen years. We've got super majorities in the Assembly, supermajorities
in the state legislature. We have a city council that's
entirely democratic. We've got a mayor that's entirely democratic. And
that's all we've had as mayor for twenty five years
in La and so they the same thing with the
(08:54):
Board of Supervisors that runs La County. It's five to nothing.
Democratic women and there is no Republican party here. There's nothing,
there's no resistance. There's a handful of legislators in the Assembly.
There's a hand and I it's the Republican out here.
(09:15):
Republicans out here are completely inept, completely feeble, impotent. There
might be one or two guys. And so we're locked down.
And during COVID we were literally locked down. We had
the worst COVID shutdown rules in the whole country. And
so it is what you're seeing in the national news.
(09:37):
And Gavin Newsom is behind it all. And I told
a friend of mine the other day, old friend who
normally votes Democratic. I said, look, I'm not telling you
to vote for Republican. I'm just saying you got to
find another Democrat. You do not want Gavin Newsom. You
do not want him running the country. Got to live
(10:00):
here every day to understand just what a disaster that
would be. I will play you when we come back
a clip of Gavin Newsom so you could get a
little window into his character and see how quickly he
will lie. And he will change his lie two or
(10:24):
three times in the middle of a conversation. They'll say
anything to get out of a conversation to gain the
upper hand, to make a point, and it's actually fascinating.
It has to do with the famous Palisades fire. Also
later on in the show, we're gonna have Katie Grimes
on californiaglobe dot com. Katie has this website and it's
(10:49):
filled the breach because you may have wondered, as I
was telling you about the decay of California, well where's
the media covering this? Well, on a local basis, they
don't scattered stories here and there if something egregious happens,
but they don't cover it. They run protection for everybody
in the legislature, for Newsom, for Karen Bass by simply
(11:11):
not covering it. It's fascinating. It's not that they're biased
with all their coverage. There is no coverage. It just
doesn't exist, and so a lot of people don't know
the depth of what's going on and how how how
how much money has been stolen. You think Tim Watson
Minnesota as the story and we're going to get to
(11:32):
that later as well. Gavin Newsom absolutely dwarfsome, So we'll
talk about all that coming up again. I wanted to
thank Clay and Buck for letting me fill in today.
I'm John Cobelt from KFI in Los Angeles on the Klay,
Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Welcome back to the Klay,
(11:56):
Travis and Buck Sexton Show. I'm John Cobelt from I
Can't find Los Angeles, filling in today and to take
you through the next few hours. And since I'm here
in Los Angeles and have been out here for over
thirty years, I thought i'd try to help you understand
the Gavin Usom phenomenon since in many polls, most polls,
(12:18):
he's the leading Democratic candidate to be president. And you
see him and he's always dressed in a beautiful, shiny suit,
and he's got great hair, and he's got a strong
chin and can seem very affable. But the state is
a disaster here, and I just if you haven't researched
much about him or really delved into him, I'm trying
(12:40):
to give you the first morning. Don't go near this one.
No matter what party you are, a Democrat, Republican, independent, whatever,
do not put this guy in charge of the country.
And I want to show you his character here. This
is a clip from the from the Palisades Fire. I
(13:02):
think everybody knows about that. And there was a woman
and let me get her name here, it's Rachel Darvish.
She's driving around looking at the devastation in her old
neighborhood where her old house used to be, and just
and she was with a Sky News reporter, like Rachel
(13:27):
was given the Sky News reporter a tour of the neighborhood.
And just by chance, they happened on the block where
Gavin Newsom was, you know, with some of his staff members.
And Newsom was literally walking across the street, and Rachel
Darvish jumped out of the car and ran up to Newsom,
(13:48):
and Newsom was really startled. Rachel wanted to know what
he was going to do about the fire and making
sure it doesn't happen again because Rachel's daughter school had
burned to the ground. And listen to the excuse that
Newsome gives as to why he can't talk to her
(14:10):
right now, and then listen how he changes his story,
like cut one, Governor, you got a second governor, Governor,
I live here, Governor, that was my daughter's school. Governor,
please tell me what you're going to do, but I'm
can I hurt of my promise I'm literally talking to
the President right now to specifically answer the question of
what we can do for you and your daughter? Can
(14:31):
I hear it? Can I hear your call? Because I
don't believe it? I'm sorry, can I there's literally I've
tried five times. That's why I'm walking around to make
that I'm the president not taking your call because it's
not going through. Why I have to get self service.
Let's get it, Let's get it. I want to be
here when you call the President. I appreciate it. I'm
doing that right now. And to immediately get reimbursements, individual
(14:54):
assistance and to help you'd go. Devis looking for me.
I'm so sorry, especially for your daughter. I have four kids.
Everyone who went to school there, they lost their homes.
They lost two homes because they were living in one
and building another. Kevin, please tell me, tell me what
are you going to do with the president. Right now,
we're getting we're getting the resources to help rebuild. Why
(15:16):
is there no water in the hydrants? Governor? It's all literally,
is it going to be different next time? It has
to be. It has to be. Of course, what are
you going to do to fill the hydrants? I would
fill them up personally. You know that I would fill
up the hydrants myself, but would you do that? I
would do whatever I can, but you're not. I see
(15:37):
the Do you know there's water dripping over there? Governor
there's water coming out there? You can use it. I
appreciate it. I'm going to make the call to address
everything I can right now, including making sure people to
make sure you can I have an opportunity to at
least tell people you're doing what you're saying you're doing
cold somebody have a contact. Can I have your contact now?
(16:01):
But when she first ran up to him, he said,
I'm literally talking to Joe Biden right now. Well he
wasn't literally talking to him. He made that up. And
then he said, well, I've been trying to call five times,
and then it's like, well I can't get a cell
signal here. So when we come back, we'll talk more
(16:24):
about He's a shape shifter and you heard a great
example of that there. This is John Coblt filling in
on the Mike Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Buck back. Hi,
there to the Fight Travis and Buck Sexton Show. I'm
(16:47):
John Cobelt, your guest host for the day. From KFI
in Los Angeles, have a daily radio show in the afternoon,
and we've been talking about Gavin Newsom, the governor of California,
because I've lived out here for over thirty years, and
I explained earlier on that I came here having seen
California through a television screen thinking it was paradise, and
(17:10):
I got here and it actually was. And then over
the last ten years everything has just gone to hell.
The place has rotted out. It's not an exaggeration what
you hear, it's it's it's it's accurate. It's if anything,
it's underplayed. And at the at the top of the
(17:30):
food chain is Gavin Newsom, the governor. And he's been
governor for a long time now. He can't weasel out
and say it with somebody else's problem. He's been the
governor for seven years. Next year's his last eight years.
Before that, he was lieutenant governor. Eight years before that,
he was the mayor of San Francisco. And his character
(17:50):
is not existent. And I played a clip in the
last segment to demonstrate it. And I'm going to go
over like step by step. Here, this woman, Rachel Dervish
runs up to him, She's a distraught, very upset mother
in the Palisades. This is right in the midst of
fire week. Her home is burned down, her kid, her
(18:11):
daughter's school is burned down, and there's this reporter from
Sky News in London following her around as she goes
through the neighborhood. They're driving in a car. By coincidence,
Gavin Newsom is on the block crossing the street. She
jumps out. Sky News follows her and gets this conversation
(18:32):
that we played and says, you know, he says, She says, Governor,
you know, can you do something? And his first line,
I'm literally talking to Joe Biden right now. And he
used the word literally, and she immediately picked up that
he was lying and said, well, let me talk to him. Oh,
(18:58):
he wasn't literally talking to anybody. He was holding a
disconnected phone. There was no Joe Biden on the other end.
By the way, what are the odds that if he
actually got through to Joe Biden, Biden would have been
awake to answer it. So he's not talking to Biden.
And then he changed the story, well, I've tried to
call five times. Five times. Oh, I thought you were
(19:23):
literally talking and then well, I'm trying to get cell service,
so you're not. You didn't. You weren't literally talking to him.
He isn't on the phone. You didn't try to call
five times because you don't have to sell service. You
can just look at the phone. You're not going to
keep dialing and dialing if you've got the no cell
service icon at the top of the phone. In fact,
(19:45):
you'd be getting in a car and driving downhill where
there is self service. He was just making it up
on the fly. This is what he does. I'll give
you another example, also connected to the fire. At various
times when he spoke of the fire, he lied and
(20:08):
said it was climate change. Well, then we discovered it
was an arsonist that set the original fire. Oh well,
then he lied and said he had pre deployed fire
trucks one hundred and ten of them throughout the mountain
range across Los Angeles. He didn't deploy any that would
(20:30):
be zero. He gives specific numbers, like I talked, I
called five times, Joe Biden, I put out one hundred
and ten fire trucks. There were zero fire trucks. It
wasn't climate change, it was a crazy arsonist. None of
the fires start out here in California because a climate
change zero. They start primarily because because of lightning, arson
(20:57):
or this is a big category that has sparked the
worst fires. Power lines fall down, electrical equipment starts sparking
because the major power companies out here, pged in southern
California Edison, don't maintain their wires, their poles. They're transformers.
(21:17):
Some of this stuff is one hundred years old, so
it falls apart, it falls over in the wind, and
it starts huge blazes. It's always electric companies. And if
it's not that, it's arsonists. And if it's not that,
it's lightning strikes, dry lightning in the summer out here,
(21:37):
it's like a desert phenomenon. Dry air comes in from
the desert and sparks the lightning. That's what starts the
vast majority of the fires. And there was the third life. Okay,
he said it was climate change. Then he said it
he pre deployed fire trucks. And then he said, well,
(21:58):
he really had nothing to do with it because it
wasn't on state Land. Well weeks later we found out
it did start on state Land. It started on state
Land on the night of January first, this was called
the Lockman fire. This is a week before the Big
Palisades fire, and the LA Fire Department showed up and
(22:20):
put it out on New Year's Day morning, and then
within hours Newsom's Parks Department set down representatives to stop
the fire department from mopping up. When a fire department
mops up, they have to tamp down all the hotspots.
There were hot rocks, there were hot tree stumps, that
(22:44):
was smoldering, smoke coming out of the ground. You know,
the root system is still very hot. And these employees
from the State Parks Department, and there's video and photos
of this, basically chased the LA Fire Department off the
state land, probably saying no, why would they do that.
They did it because they didn't want the firefighters stomping
(23:07):
on the milk vetch plant. The milk vetch plant. Seriously,
there's a Latin name for it, the astrologus plant. And
there are now text messages memos where the fire the
Parks employees are telling the LA Fire Department basically get
(23:28):
off the land. The fire department wanted to bring in
a bulldozer to cut a fire break, and they wanted
to put out all the smoldering They said, no, you
can't do that. You will tear up the milk vetch plant.
It's an endangered plant. Why am I explaining all this
because six days later, in that exact spot, the winds
(23:52):
started blowing on January seventh, whipped up the smoldering fire
and turned it into the big one, turned it into
the huge blaze that we all watched or experienced for
a week. And it was because his state employees were
following state policy not to destroy the milkvetch plant, and
(24:16):
they actually kicked out the Los Angeles Fire Department. And
then he went around saying, well, the state had nothing
to do with it. The state was the cause of
the huge Palisates fire hit policies under his administration, military
and the new tactic now as all these bombshells come
out is everybody runs in highs. Nobody even bothers to
(24:40):
deny things anymore, Nobody contests the story anymore. They just
shut down and the beating out. And here in California
at least, and the national media too is so compliant
because he's the great Hope. They don't question anything. Again,
very similar to the Tim Walts situation. They knew that
(25:01):
story was going on with the fraud for seven years.
There were employees reporting it. There were occasionally scattered news stories,
but nobody followed up, and so for seven years all
the money could be looted in Minnesota under Tim Waltz's nose.
Here is the same thing. There's tremendously damaging information and
(25:24):
it's coming from a civil lawsuit filed by thousands of
Pacific Palisades residents and their attorneys are now subpoenaing records,
getting testimony, and now we're finding out what the real
story is. The Palisades burned down, six thousand plus homes
burned for the sake of the milkvetch plant because the
(25:48):
first fire was you could put out easily. And this
is what's astonishing about what's going on and how bad
it's covered in the news media. And believe me, a
lot of people they see Gavin Knewsome primping and preening around.
(26:08):
I think it physically ill. It's how cool? Were you kidding?
And this is just story. I told you, it was
just about that disaster in the Palisades. Oh, by the way,
just as a personal thing, I live about three miles
from the fire, and that week we had no power,
(26:32):
we had no water, and I wanted to go to
a hotel with my wife and we have a bunch
of pets and we but my wife wanted to stay
because she knew the looters would come and steal all
our stuff. And at first I thought that was an overreaction.
It turned out she was right. Seven homes in her
(26:55):
neighborhood got looted because it was completely dark, there was
no electricity whatsoever, and we had baseball bats all over
the house and my wife is walking around pacing around
the baseball bat, and so was I. In case a
bad guy got in and seven homes were looted, we
(27:15):
put up a lot of flashlights all over the place
to make it look like we were home, and we
had to hire a guy. We had to hire an
ex marine who stood in front of the house with
a loaded gun. He showed us his loaded pistol and
he said, I see him, I shoot him, I kill him.
That's what we resorted to. We had to hire. It
was somebody's electrician in the neighborhood who used to be
(27:38):
a marine, and he had a gun. And I remember
after I left, the guy in front of the house
to go to the hardware store to get flashlights. I thought, wow,
total breakdown of government. There's no fire, there's no police,
there's no electricity, there's no water, there's no nothing. It
(28:03):
was it was a total breakdown of civilization. And I
felt like I never felt in my life. Right. I mean,
we'll all grow up. It's like, well, somebody's going to
take care of us, right. The police will show up,
the fire department will show up, the government will take
care of things. You know, the mommy and daddy they'll come. No,
there was nothing. It was every man for himself. You
(28:25):
have to find a guy who owned a gun and
hire him to stand in front of your house. And
my son said, well what if what if he shoots
and kills somebody. It's like, I don't want to know.
I don't want to be shot and killed. That's up
to him to make make his own judgment. And this
is this is what we were reduced to. And that
(28:49):
sounds like a once in a lifetime outrageous story, but
there's many versions of this going on every day throughout
the state, and LA just a complete collect apps in
ordinary government. I tell you more about this when we
come back in the next hour, we're gonna have Katie
Grimes on from California Globe and she's got a long term,
(29:12):
kind of global perception of what Gavin Newsom has been
to the state because she covers them every day. And
you're listening. I'm John Cobalt from Cafe Radio in LA,
and you're listening to the Klay Travis and Buck Sexton show,
the fire story, the pala State's fire story, and just
(29:37):
the incessant incompetence. And on top of them, on top
of the line the Gavin Newsom does as governor of
the state, there's just the practical day to day living.
And I just off the top of my head, during
a commercial break, wrote down I'm not going to read
(29:58):
them all here, but I wrote down like a dozen
categories where California is the worst or the highest or
the most and all the categories are bad categories. And
that's just off the top of my head. I'll give
you one example, which we talk about all the time.
(30:20):
We have the highest gas taxis in the state by far.
There's the Triple A has a state by state fuel price.
It's a ranking and it tells you the cheapest all
the way to the most expensive. You know how much
(30:42):
California gas goes for average is four twenty nine a gallon.
Many places it's five dollars a gallon in other states.
I'm looking here in Oklahoma, it's two twenty three. The
average Colorado I was two thirty eight. Texas is two forty.
(31:04):
And you might say, well, you know, that's a left
wing Democratic state. What do you expect, except it's way
more than the other left wing democratic states. That's the
thing we stand by ourselves. I mean, we're at four
twenty nine. New York's only three h four. Where's Massachusetts go?
Massachusetts is two ninety six. Massachusetts is in the twos.
(31:27):
New Jersey I used to live there. That's a very
high tax state. That's two eighty four. So this is
I'm talking to the daily grind of just trying to
exist here. And this absolutely crushes the lower and middle
class in this state. So it's it's not just his lying,
(31:49):
it's just like, why would you do this? And you
know what all the taxes are for. It's the climate
change ob session, which is another big racket. There's several
big rackets in this state. Again along the lines of
the Somalian racket in Minnesota. It's billions and billions of dollars.
And later on I'll tell you about all the different
(32:11):
rackets that go on here. And we're going to talk
to Katie Grimes next from California Globe dot com and
she'll give you her assessment of Gavin Newsom as a
national political figure and a possible president. I'm really happy
to be here, John Cobelt from Cafe Los Angeles, here
on the Clay Travis at Buck Sexton Show
Welcome to today's edition of The Clay Travis and Buck
Sexton Show podcast. Welcome, how are you to the Clay
Travis and Buck Sexton Show. I'm John Cobalt filling in
for Claying Buck today and I want to thank them
for giving me the opportunity. I'm normally on Can't Find
Los Angeles every afternoon doing a radio show and have
(00:21):
been out here for a long time and it's really
a lot of fun to be able to be on
Clay and Bucks Network today. And what I wanted to
talk about, and we've got a lot of material here
is since Kevin Newsom has become undisputably the top Democratic
candidate for the twenty twenty eight race, he is he
(00:45):
is a piece of work, and there's a lot of
detail that you probably haven't heard about because I don't
think the national media has covered him very much. And
when you've probably seen all the video and all the
news stories, especially on Fox News about what a disaster
California is, and when you see that kind of coverage,
(01:07):
I always wonder, I'm sure you do, it's like, all right,
are they taking things out of context? Are they cherry picking?
Is this one isolated block or town. Is it really
like this in much of the state, And the answer
is yes. What you're seeing on television the way California
is covered, it is that bad, especially if you're in
(01:27):
the big cities. It cannot be overstated just how difficult
life is in places like Los Angeles and Santa Monica
and in San Francisco. It is a mess. It's a
mess coming from Gavin Newsom's policies. It is a mess
coming from local policies, city councils and mayors. It is
(01:48):
a progressive nightmare out here. And I want to tell
you just a brief rundown, because whenever you utter an
opinion these days, people want to dismiss saying, oh, well,
you're just blank, and they give you a label. Oh
you're just conservative, or you're just a Republican, or you're
just some kind of hater. And then I always think
(02:10):
it's like, no, no, this is real life here in California.
This is what normal people who are not overly political
talk about all day. This is the only thing non political,
non partisan, ordinary people talk about. Because life can be
really difficult and frustrating. And so when I was a kid,
I grew up in New Jersey in clebrig New Jersey,
(02:33):
and you know, you know, the winter's in the Northeast,
They're long, they're cold, sunsets at four point thirty in
the afternoon. I'm eight years old, and the ray of
hope when you're in the middle of winter, let's say
in December, is I turned on the television and I
would see late afternoon football games from the West Coast.
I'd see games from Los Angeles games, San Diego Chargers,
(02:56):
the Oakland Raiders, and I'd see sunshine right because there's
three hours earlier, sunshine, people in short sleeves, beautiful women
in the stands, and I'm thinking, wow, this and this
is an eight I thought, well, this is magical, this
is wonderful. And you know, then there was the Rose
Parade every year, so it buried in my head. It's like,
(03:18):
when I grew up, I want to go live in California.
That was the dream because it was so wonderful. And
eventually I fast forward, maybe about twenty years, my wife
and I got to move to Los Angeles. I got
a job offer from KFI back in the nineties, and
I thought, well, this is exactly where I wanted to
(03:39):
be and we drove around our first three weeks here
before I went on the air, and we went everywhere
from the Mexican border through San Diego and San Francisco.
San Francisco at the time, I almost dropped dead because
of its beauty. I thought, this is the most gorgeous
city I've ever seen in my life. La was fun
and exciting, the beaches, the weather, and you know, eventually,
(04:04):
well we made a home. We made a home here
and raised three kids, and then about ten years ago
everything started going to hell. And it was gradual. You know,
it's first you don't you shrug it off, saying, well,
all right, they'll take care of it. It's a bad policy,
bad idea. Let me start with the homelessness, because the
(04:26):
homelessness has infected and overrun the city of Los Angeles,
the city of Santa Monica, which used to be a jewel,
San Francisco, of course, Sacramento. And it's a policy from
the top on down where most of the homeless are
not people quote down on their luck, who lost their
(04:49):
job a couple of weeks ago and can't make a
rent payment. Most of them are are drug addicts, just
crazed drug addicts. The rest of them are mental patients.
It's as if they opened a mental institution and let
everybody run free. Now, the drug addiction can make you
(05:12):
mentally ill. The mentally ill people turned to drugs, so
it mixes together. I saw a UCLA study where three
quarters of the homeless they estimated were mentally ill and
three quarters were drug addicts. Well that's one hundred and
fifty percent of the homeless. So that's what's going on.
And you can't fix most of them, at least not
(05:33):
by I don't know, opening up a retail store clinic
on the street. All these people need intensive treatment. They
need to be in beds, they need to be locked up,
they need long term therapy, they need to be on medications.
And instead, the official policy of Gavin Newsom is is
(05:57):
housing first, and it's the same thing with Karen vast
beara Los Angeles. Housing first, which means nothing is done
for their addictions, nothing is done for their mental illness.
They have thrown billions of dollars to build apartments and
and all kinds of shelters, except all you're doing is
(06:19):
you're taking the crazy person or the drug addicted person,
and you're putting them inside and then they wander out
during the day to buy their drugs and to act crazy.
And let me tell you, these people are terrifying. My
wife and I have been chased by people with sticks
running down the street screaming. We have been chased in
(06:41):
our car. We have witnessed people just You'll be walking
down the street, just going to the drug store, the
grocery store, and somebody will drop their pants and defecate
right in front of you. These are not anomalies. You
go to Hollywood, you go to Venice, you go to
places that used to be the tourism capitals of America,
(07:03):
and it's mind boggling what's allowed. And everybody calls and
everybody complains, and they have a new policy. No matter
who you call, they don't respond. They don't answer the phone,
they don't answer the email, they don't answer the door.
(07:23):
They don't care because I don't know. I think so
many people have checked out that they know they're all
going to get re elected. It is the strangest phenomenon.
I noticed things starting to change. Like I said, about
ten years ago, I also noticed how things changed with
people responding to issues and taking action. And it was
(07:44):
about the time the smartphone came out, and I actually
think people are so absorbed by their smartphones and so
absorbed by being on the internet and scrolling social media
and scrolling texting, that they have kind of lost connection
with their neighborhood and their and they're just letting things happen.
They've given up on forcing a Gavin Newsomer or Karen
(08:08):
Bass to do anything about it. Oh and by the way,
on the housing first, it's extremely expensive, it takes an
extremely long time, and there's very little housing that's built.
Most of the homeless money is stolen. And I'll explain
that to you coming up in a few minutes. It
is and there's one party rule. We've had a democratic
(08:33):
governor now ever since Arnold Schwarzenegger, so it's about fifteen
sixteen years. We've got super majorities in the Assembly, supermajorities
in the state legislature. We have a city council that's
entirely democratic. We've got a mayor that's entirely democratic. And
that's all we've had as mayor for twenty five years
in La and so they the same thing with the
(08:54):
Board of Supervisors that runs La County. It's five to nothing.
Democratic women and there is no Republican party here. There's nothing,
there's no resistance. There's a handful of legislators in the Assembly.
There's a hand and I it's the Republican out here.
(09:15):
Republicans out here are completely inept, completely feeble, impotent. There
might be one or two guys. And so we're locked down.
And during COVID we were literally locked down. We had
the worst COVID shutdown rules in the whole country. And
so it is what you're seeing in the national news.
(09:37):
And Gavin Newsom is behind it all. And I told
a friend of mine the other day, old friend who
normally votes Democratic. I said, look, I'm not telling you
to vote for Republican. I'm just saying you got to
find another Democrat. You do not want Gavin Newsom. You
do not want him running the country. Got to live
(10:00):
here every day to understand just what a disaster that
would be. I will play you when we come back
a clip of Gavin Newsom so you could get a
little window into his character and see how quickly he
will lie. And he will change his lie two or
(10:24):
three times in the middle of a conversation. They'll say
anything to get out of a conversation to gain the
upper hand, to make a point, and it's actually fascinating.
It has to do with the famous Palisades fire. Also
later on in the show, we're gonna have Katie Grimes
on californiaglobe dot com. Katie has this website and it's
(10:49):
filled the breach because you may have wondered, as I
was telling you about the decay of California, well where's
the media covering this? Well, on a local basis, they
don't scattered stories here and there if something egregious happens,
but they don't cover it. They run protection for everybody
in the legislature, for Newsom, for Karen Bass by simply
(11:11):
not covering it. It's fascinating. It's not that they're biased
with all their coverage. There is no coverage. It just
doesn't exist, and so a lot of people don't know
the depth of what's going on and how how how
how much money has been stolen. You think Tim Watson
Minnesota as the story and we're going to get to
(11:32):
that later as well. Gavin Newsom absolutely dwarfsome, So we'll
talk about all that coming up again. I wanted to
thank Clay and Buck for letting me fill in today.
I'm John Cobelt from KFI in Los Angeles on the Klay,
Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Welcome back to the Klay,
(11:56):
Travis and Buck Sexton Show. I'm John Cobelt from I
Can't find Los Angeles, filling in today and to take
you through the next few hours. And since I'm here
in Los Angeles and have been out here for over
thirty years, I thought i'd try to help you understand
the Gavin Usom phenomenon since in many polls, most polls,
(12:18):
he's the leading Democratic candidate to be president. And you
see him and he's always dressed in a beautiful, shiny suit,
and he's got great hair, and he's got a strong
chin and can seem very affable. But the state is
a disaster here, and I just if you haven't researched
much about him or really delved into him, I'm trying
(12:40):
to give you the first morning. Don't go near this one.
No matter what party you are, a Democrat, Republican, independent, whatever,
do not put this guy in charge of the country.
And I want to show you his character here. This
is a clip from the from the Palisades Fire. I
(13:02):
think everybody knows about that. And there was a woman
and let me get her name here, it's Rachel Darvish.
She's driving around looking at the devastation in her old
neighborhood where her old house used to be, and just
and she was with a Sky News reporter, like Rachel
(13:27):
was given the Sky News reporter a tour of the neighborhood.
And just by chance, they happened on the block where
Gavin Newsom was, you know, with some of his staff members.
And Newsom was literally walking across the street, and Rachel
Darvish jumped out of the car and ran up to Newsom,
(13:48):
and Newsom was really startled. Rachel wanted to know what
he was going to do about the fire and making
sure it doesn't happen again because Rachel's daughter school had
burned to the ground. And listen to the excuse that
Newsome gives as to why he can't talk to her
(14:10):
right now, and then listen how he changes his story,
like cut one, Governor, you got a second governor, Governor,
I live here, Governor, that was my daughter's school. Governor,
please tell me what you're going to do, but I'm
can I hurt of my promise I'm literally talking to
the President right now to specifically answer the question of
what we can do for you and your daughter? Can
(14:31):
I hear it? Can I hear your call? Because I
don't believe it? I'm sorry, can I there's literally I've
tried five times. That's why I'm walking around to make
that I'm the president not taking your call because it's
not going through. Why I have to get self service.
Let's get it, Let's get it. I want to be
here when you call the President. I appreciate it. I'm
doing that right now. And to immediately get reimbursements, individual
(14:54):
assistance and to help you'd go. Devis looking for me.
I'm so sorry, especially for your daughter. I have four kids.
Everyone who went to school there, they lost their homes.
They lost two homes because they were living in one
and building another. Kevin, please tell me, tell me what
are you going to do with the president. Right now,
we're getting we're getting the resources to help rebuild. Why
(15:16):
is there no water in the hydrants? Governor? It's all literally,
is it going to be different next time? It has
to be. It has to be. Of course, what are
you going to do to fill the hydrants? I would
fill them up personally. You know that I would fill
up the hydrants myself, but would you do that? I
would do whatever I can, but you're not. I see
(15:37):
the Do you know there's water dripping over there? Governor
there's water coming out there? You can use it. I
appreciate it. I'm going to make the call to address
everything I can right now, including making sure people to
make sure you can I have an opportunity to at
least tell people you're doing what you're saying you're doing
cold somebody have a contact. Can I have your contact now?
(16:01):
But when she first ran up to him, he said,
I'm literally talking to Joe Biden right now. Well he
wasn't literally talking to him. He made that up. And
then he said, well, I've been trying to call five times,
and then it's like, well I can't get a cell
signal here. So when we come back, we'll talk more
(16:24):
about He's a shape shifter and you heard a great
example of that there. This is John Coblt filling in
on the Mike Travis and Buck Sexton Show. Buck back. Hi,
there to the Fight Travis and Buck Sexton Show. I'm
(16:47):
John Cobelt, your guest host for the day. From KFI
in Los Angeles, have a daily radio show in the afternoon,
and we've been talking about Gavin Newsom, the governor of California,
because I've lived out here for over thirty years, and
I explained earlier on that I came here having seen
California through a television screen thinking it was paradise, and
(17:10):
I got here and it actually was. And then over
the last ten years everything has just gone to hell.
The place has rotted out. It's not an exaggeration what
you hear, it's it's it's it's accurate. It's if anything,
it's underplayed. And at the at the top of the
(17:30):
food chain is Gavin Newsom, the governor. And he's been
governor for a long time now. He can't weasel out
and say it with somebody else's problem. He's been the
governor for seven years. Next year's his last eight years.
Before that, he was lieutenant governor. Eight years before that,
he was the mayor of San Francisco. And his character
(17:50):
is not existent. And I played a clip in the
last segment to demonstrate it. And I'm going to go
over like step by step. Here, this woman, Rachel Dervish
runs up to him, She's a distraught, very upset mother
in the Palisades. This is right in the midst of
fire week. Her home is burned down, her kid, her
(18:11):
daughter's school is burned down, and there's this reporter from
Sky News in London following her around as she goes
through the neighborhood. They're driving in a car. By coincidence,
Gavin Newsom is on the block crossing the street. She
jumps out. Sky News follows her and gets this conversation
(18:32):
that we played and says, you know, he says, She says, Governor,
you know, can you do something? And his first line,
I'm literally talking to Joe Biden right now. And he
used the word literally, and she immediately picked up that
he was lying and said, well, let me talk to him. Oh,
(18:58):
he wasn't literally talking to anybody. He was holding a
disconnected phone. There was no Joe Biden on the other end.
By the way, what are the odds that if he
actually got through to Joe Biden, Biden would have been
awake to answer it. So he's not talking to Biden.
And then he changed the story, well, I've tried to
call five times. Five times. Oh, I thought you were
(19:23):
literally talking and then well, I'm trying to get cell service,
so you're not. You didn't. You weren't literally talking to him.
He isn't on the phone. You didn't try to call
five times because you don't have to sell service. You
can just look at the phone. You're not going to
keep dialing and dialing if you've got the no cell
service icon at the top of the phone. In fact,
(19:45):
you'd be getting in a car and driving downhill where
there is self service. He was just making it up
on the fly. This is what he does. I'll give
you another example, also connected to the fire. At various
times when he spoke of the fire, he lied and
(20:08):
said it was climate change. Well, then we discovered it
was an arsonist that set the original fire. Oh well,
then he lied and said he had pre deployed fire
trucks one hundred and ten of them throughout the mountain
range across Los Angeles. He didn't deploy any that would
(20:30):
be zero. He gives specific numbers, like I talked, I
called five times, Joe Biden, I put out one hundred
and ten fire trucks. There were zero fire trucks. It
wasn't climate change, it was a crazy arsonist. None of
the fires start out here in California because a climate
change zero. They start primarily because because of lightning, arson
(20:57):
or this is a big category that has sparked the
worst fires. Power lines fall down, electrical equipment starts sparking
because the major power companies out here, pged in southern
California Edison, don't maintain their wires, their poles. They're transformers.
(21:17):
Some of this stuff is one hundred years old, so
it falls apart, it falls over in the wind, and
it starts huge blazes. It's always electric companies. And if
it's not that, it's arsonists. And if it's not that,
it's lightning strikes, dry lightning in the summer out here,
(21:37):
it's like a desert phenomenon. Dry air comes in from
the desert and sparks the lightning. That's what starts the
vast majority of the fires. And there was the third life. Okay,
he said it was climate change. Then he said it
he pre deployed fire trucks. And then he said, well,
(21:58):
he really had nothing to do with it because it
wasn't on state Land. Well weeks later we found out
it did start on state Land. It started on state
Land on the night of January first, this was called
the Lockman fire. This is a week before the Big
Palisades fire, and the LA Fire Department showed up and
(22:20):
put it out on New Year's Day morning, and then
within hours Newsom's Parks Department set down representatives to stop
the fire department from mopping up. When a fire department
mops up, they have to tamp down all the hotspots.
There were hot rocks, there were hot tree stumps, that
(22:44):
was smoldering, smoke coming out of the ground. You know,
the root system is still very hot. And these employees
from the State Parks Department, and there's video and photos
of this, basically chased the LA Fire Department off the
state land, probably saying no, why would they do that.
They did it because they didn't want the firefighters stomping
(23:07):
on the milk vetch plant. The milk vetch plant. Seriously,
there's a Latin name for it, the astrologus plant. And
there are now text messages memos where the fire the
Parks employees are telling the LA Fire Department basically get
(23:28):
off the land. The fire department wanted to bring in
a bulldozer to cut a fire break, and they wanted
to put out all the smoldering They said, no, you
can't do that. You will tear up the milk vetch plant.
It's an endangered plant. Why am I explaining all this
because six days later, in that exact spot, the winds
(23:52):
started blowing on January seventh, whipped up the smoldering fire
and turned it into the big one, turned it into
the huge blaze that we all watched or experienced for
a week. And it was because his state employees were
following state policy not to destroy the milkvetch plant, and
(24:16):
they actually kicked out the Los Angeles Fire Department. And
then he went around saying, well, the state had nothing
to do with it. The state was the cause of
the huge Palisates fire hit policies under his administration, military
and the new tactic now as all these bombshells come
out is everybody runs in highs. Nobody even bothers to
(24:40):
deny things anymore, Nobody contests the story anymore. They just
shut down and the beating out. And here in California
at least, and the national media too is so compliant
because he's the great Hope. They don't question anything. Again,
very similar to the Tim Walts situation. They knew that
(25:01):
story was going on with the fraud for seven years.
There were employees reporting it. There were occasionally scattered news stories,
but nobody followed up, and so for seven years all
the money could be looted in Minnesota under Tim Waltz's nose.
Here is the same thing. There's tremendously damaging information and
(25:24):
it's coming from a civil lawsuit filed by thousands of
Pacific Palisades residents and their attorneys are now subpoenaing records,
getting testimony, and now we're finding out what the real
story is. The Palisades burned down, six thousand plus homes
burned for the sake of the milkvetch plant because the
(25:48):
first fire was you could put out easily. And this
is what's astonishing about what's going on and how bad
it's covered in the news media. And believe me, a
lot of people they see Gavin Knewsome primping and preening around.
(26:08):
I think it physically ill. It's how cool? Were you kidding?
And this is just story. I told you, it was
just about that disaster in the Palisades. Oh, by the way,
just as a personal thing, I live about three miles
from the fire, and that week we had no power,
(26:32):
we had no water, and I wanted to go to
a hotel with my wife and we have a bunch
of pets and we but my wife wanted to stay
because she knew the looters would come and steal all
our stuff. And at first I thought that was an overreaction.
It turned out she was right. Seven homes in her
(26:55):
neighborhood got looted because it was completely dark, there was
no electricity whatsoever, and we had baseball bats all over
the house and my wife is walking around pacing around
the baseball bat, and so was I. In case a
bad guy got in and seven homes were looted, we
(27:15):
put up a lot of flashlights all over the place
to make it look like we were home, and we
had to hire a guy. We had to hire an
ex marine who stood in front of the house with
a loaded gun. He showed us his loaded pistol and
he said, I see him, I shoot him, I kill him.
That's what we resorted to. We had to hire. It
was somebody's electrician in the neighborhood who used to be
(27:38):
a marine, and he had a gun. And I remember
after I left, the guy in front of the house
to go to the hardware store to get flashlights. I thought, wow,
total breakdown of government. There's no fire, there's no police,
there's no electricity, there's no water, there's no nothing. It
(28:03):
was it was a total breakdown of civilization. And I
felt like I never felt in my life. Right. I mean,
we'll all grow up. It's like, well, somebody's going to
take care of us, right. The police will show up,
the fire department will show up, the government will take
care of things. You know, the mommy and daddy they'll come. No,
there was nothing. It was every man for himself. You
(28:25):
have to find a guy who owned a gun and
hire him to stand in front of your house. And
my son said, well what if what if he shoots
and kills somebody. It's like, I don't want to know.
I don't want to be shot and killed. That's up
to him to make make his own judgment. And this
is this is what we were reduced to. And that
(28:49):
sounds like a once in a lifetime outrageous story, but
there's many versions of this going on every day throughout
the state, and LA just a complete collect apps in
ordinary government. I tell you more about this when we
come back in the next hour, we're gonna have Katie
Grimes on from California Globe and she's got a long term,
(29:12):
kind of global perception of what Gavin Newsom has been
to the state because she covers them every day. And
you're listening. I'm John Cobalt from Cafe Radio in LA,
and you're listening to the Klay Travis and Buck Sexton show,
the fire story, the pala State's fire story, and just
(29:37):
the incessant incompetence. And on top of them, on top
of the line the Gavin Newsom does as governor of
the state, there's just the practical day to day living.
And I just off the top of my head, during
a commercial break, wrote down I'm not going to read
(29:58):
them all here, but I wrote down like a dozen
categories where California is the worst or the highest or
the most and all the categories are bad categories. And
that's just off the top of my head. I'll give
you one example, which we talk about all the time.
(30:20):
We have the highest gas taxis in the state by far.
There's the Triple A has a state by state fuel price.
It's a ranking and it tells you the cheapest all
the way to the most expensive. You know how much
(30:42):
California gas goes for average is four twenty nine a gallon.
Many places it's five dollars a gallon in other states.
I'm looking here in Oklahoma, it's two twenty three. The
average Colorado I was two thirty eight. Texas is two forty.
(31:04):
And you might say, well, you know, that's a left
wing Democratic state. What do you expect, except it's way
more than the other left wing democratic states. That's the
thing we stand by ourselves. I mean, we're at four
twenty nine. New York's only three h four. Where's Massachusetts go?
Massachusetts is two ninety six. Massachusetts is in the twos.
(31:27):
New Jersey I used to live there. That's a very
high tax state. That's two eighty four. So this is
I'm talking to the daily grind of just trying to
exist here. And this absolutely crushes the lower and middle
class in this state. So it's it's not just his lying,
(31:49):
it's just like, why would you do this? And you
know what all the taxes are for. It's the climate
change ob session, which is another big racket. There's several
big rackets in this state. Again along the lines of
the Somalian racket in Minnesota. It's billions and billions of dollars.
And later on I'll tell you about all the different
(32:11):
rackets that go on here. And we're going to talk
to Katie Grimes next from California Globe dot com and
she'll give you her assessment of Gavin Newsom as a
national political figure and a possible president. I'm really happy
to be here, John Cobelt from Cafe Los Angeles, here
on the Clay Travis at Buck Sexton Show
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The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Two Guys, Five Rings: Matt, Bowen & The Olympics
Two Guys (Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers). Five Rings (you know, from the Olympics logo). One essential podcast for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. Bowen Yang (SNL, Wicked) and Matt Rogers (Palm Royale, No Good Deed) of Las Culturistas are back for a second season of Two Guys, Five Rings, a collaboration with NBC Sports and iHeartRadio. In this 15-episode event, Bowen and Matt discuss the top storylines, obsess over Italian culture, and find out what really goes on in the Olympic Village.