April 3, 2025 • 33 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 3 (04/03) - Todd Bensman comes on the show to talk about how fentanyl traffic across the US border now that Pres. Trump is back in office. More on the border with Todd Bensman. More on the tariffs. Update on how the fast food minimum wage has impacted business a year later.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can't. I am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobel Podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
We're on from one until four after four o'clock John
Cobelt Show on demand. That's the podcast version, and you
could pick up on what you missed. Coming up later
on the hour, we will explain for those of you
joining us in this hour, what why the Trump tariffs
(00:23):
are happening, what's led up to this this point, And
just to reiterate that nobody really knows what's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
There's a as usual with Trump, there's.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
A lot of hysteria, there are a lot of wild predictions,
not a whole lot of detailed explanation, and the lot
of a lot of nope. You know, everybody's like compulsively
makes predictions. It was just in a very strange culture
and just saying, you know what, we don't know what's
going to happen here. Maybe it's not going to work out,
(00:54):
but there's there's a there's a strong reason he's doing this.
It's not just to blow up the economy. We'll get
into that coming up after three point thirty. What's working
out for sure is his border policies, because the number
of people crossing the border has dropped by well over
ninety five percent now and the amount of fentanyl being
(01:16):
seized at the border has dropped fifty percent since the
November election. And we are going to talk with Todd
Bensman on He's with the Center for Immigration Studies. He's
a journalist who's been stationed at the border for a
number of years now and increasingly getting very lonely. There's
not many people crossing anymore. Todd, how are.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
You feeling pretty lonely actually down here in Del Rio, Texas,
right on the border today. Yeah, this is a bit
of good news from the border for a change. People
always accuse me of being kind of depressing in my
reports on the border, but you know, remember the president's
(01:58):
agenda to shut down the flow of fetanyl is an
apex issue. I mean, this is at the very top
of the chart. This is the reason why he's doing
tariffs on Mexico, for example, to get them to act.
And it turns out that in fact, they have gotten
(02:19):
the Mexicans to go kinetic down there in the country.
Part of the country where the feanyl is all produced,
made over ten thousand arrests they're breaking labs up, they're
busting everybody, the cooks. They're using military force in especially
(02:41):
a town called Culiacon in Sineloas State, which is as
well over one hundred labs. It's kind of considered the
center of production for fetanyl, which is the course you
responsible for killing one hundred and fifty thousand Americans or
something like that. And it's looking pretty good. The numbers
(03:02):
are down of seizures at the border and by the way,
the seat when the caesar, when I say the caizuars
are down, they're down by you know, more than fifty percent,
using far more police, more availability of troops, far more cops, eyes,
(03:23):
ears are available for this. So the fact that they're
down this much with that much attention on it means
that the smuggling is probably far down, even more down
than fifty percent. That's just the seizures we're talking about,
which is an indicator. That's if that holds. And they're
(03:45):
telling me, the administration is telling me that March is
going to be even lower than January and February for
seizures and smuggling, and American deaths are down too, So
it looks like it's it's working. I mean, it's really
an incredible story because this is about life and death
(04:05):
real you know, American lives lost to this scourge of fentanyl.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
I've seen estimates of seventy to one hundred thousand people
dying of fentanyl poisoning.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Yeah, it's awful. I mean, the last twelve months ending September,
I think it was eighty nine thousand dead Americans, which
was a decline from what it was a year priory in.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
A single year, eighty nine thousand a single year, and
the number had gone down.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
That's overwhelming.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Yeah, that's why this is such an important story because
you know, it's not about economy and you know your
pocketbook and the price of toyota or something. This is
about people living or dying in large numbers.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Well, and let me point something out here that you
said just a couple of minutes ago, Trump laid a
twenty five percent tariff on Mexico in part because it
was a way to force Mexico into shutting off the
fentanyl supply.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
And it worked.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yeah, but I've heard but until you just told that story,
I had not heard that reported anywhere making the connection.
But why the tariff happened and the effect that the
tariff had on getting Mexico to severely restrict the fentinyl supply.
I mean, that's incredible, and am I wrong? It seems
(05:39):
to be unreported.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
It's it's very underreported. I wouldn't say it's totally unreported.
For example, if you read my piece in the Daily Wire,
I go into quite a bit of detail about a
New York Times reporter in Mexico City who went to
kule Icon before and after the Trump tariff threat and
(06:02):
before you know, it's full blown terror, you know, fentanyl production.
Within a month or two after the tariff threat, there
was no fentanyl production out of Culiacon the Mexicans. She
had gone in there and everybody in all their sources,
and everybody told her it was all shut down. She
serendipitously witnessed as she was driving around town, Mexicans rating
(06:27):
these labs right in front of her. So, I mean,
the Mexicans had to get serious about fentanyl because you know,
their economy was at stake over this. And so you'll
see in the new information that I bring to light
in my Daily Wire piece comes from my interview with
(06:49):
Derek Maltz, who is head of the Dea, the Drug
Enforcement Administration, and this has his finger on the pulse
of this whole thing. And he told me that the
Mexican cartels have made a strategic business shift to stop
(07:11):
producing fentanyl and to stop smuggling it into the United
States because it's just bad for all their other business.
This thing is so toxic for politically, for them and
for the Mexicans that you know, maybe we should just
get rid of that one line, one product line. And
he said that they have intelligence showing that, you know,
(07:34):
they're just getting out of the fentanyl smuggling business altogether.
So if that holds, If that's true and everything holds,
we should see further declines and a lot of live saved,
a lot of live saved on it because of this
tariff threaten And to me, that's extraordinary, you know what
Derek Maltz was telling me. If that's true, and the
(07:58):
time will tell, and not much time, just another couple
of months, we should have a really good feel for
whether that's true.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
I mean, I was wondering when I was reading your report,
because the cartels make billions of dollars smuggling drugs and
humans across the border. And if you strip fentinyl out
of their distribution system. They're still going to want that money,
so they're now sending the drugs elsewhere in the world.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Well Montz told me that they believe right now that
they may not stop fentanyl production. They just may shift
it over to the Europeans and try to get as
much of it over into Europe as they can. They
won't be as profitable still, it's a lot farther and
the risks are higher, and they'll probably be seizures and whatnot.
(08:48):
But they are increasing cocaine and math, he said, to
make up for the revenue shortfall. But you know, I mean,
those are terrible drugs. I'm not saying that they're not terrible,
but you know, that's a strategic business decision. You know,
cocaine does not wipe out ninety thousand Americas.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Sent Inel was instant death and you only needed a
few grains. If you inhaled it, then you're you're dead.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Right, So this is this is early news. We're two
months into the campaign. I think we're about to see
a third month of decline, which which is the first
to These are the first declines in fentanyl seizures in
ten years. That means the smugglings down, the drugs are down,
(09:38):
it's not coming in as much, and so that continues. Then,
you know, I point out that, you know, this whole
thing was an amazing achievement. Really. I mean, this is
you know, just say, tens of thousands of lives.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Because we were something we were told for ten years
that it couldn't be done. So many people said that
there was no way to stop the drug flow. No
matter what you did, they would find a way around it.
Well it turns out they can't find a way, or
they've decided not to go looking.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
They'd rather try other markets.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
We're told to, you know, ball up into a fetal
position and just take the beating. But apparently not. I think.
I mean, there's good Mexican media reporting as well, excellent.
They're covering it that the Mexicans have really gone to
war and I mean they've made ten thousand arrests down
(10:30):
there for fentanyl. They've broken up all the laps in culiacon.
That's just remarkable. And it doesn't look like the cartels
are going to war over it like I thought and
some others of us thought might happen. I think they're
just gonna they're gonna switch off the spigot for fentanyl.
I mean, I hope they're gonna. It's just too politically
(10:53):
toxic for them.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Can you hang on for another segment?
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Sure you have time, because you also have a second
article out about it's called Then and Now at the
Southern Border, and you've toured extensively. You're finding a lot
of emptiness where there used to be thousands of illegal
aliens trying to make their way into the country, and
it's a pretty stark difference. We'll talk with Todd Bensman,
(11:18):
Center for Immigration Studies. He has pieces in various places.
He's got something like he said, with the Daily Wire,
Daily Wire dot com, CIS dot org, Todd Bensman b
ns m AN and he's one of the foremost journalists
when it comes to chronicling what's been going on at
the border for the last I don't know how many years.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
John coblt Moistline Tomorrow eight seven seven, Moist staighty six
eight seven seven, Moist eighty six, Last Call, or use
the talkback feature on the iHeartRadio app and hear yourself
rant and rave and complain and be angry. We continue
with Todd Bensman. In the last segment, he talked about
how fentidel smuggling is down dramatically. It's dropped fifty percent
(12:12):
since the November election, even though we have a far
larger law enforcement presence there. It's really the whole business
is drying up. The cartels are looking to other countries
on other continents to sell their deadly fentadel. And the
other story he wrote because he writes on Daily Wire
(12:35):
dot com. This one is on the Center for Immigration
STUDIESCIS dot org. Is you know, he spent a lot
of time wandering around Mexico during the heyday of extreme
illegal immigration and now it's tumbleweeds blown across the desert. Todd,
talk about it just really struck the way you described
(12:55):
the emptiness along these immigration card that used to be
quite crowded, and talk about what you've seen in the difference.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Well, all through the four years of the greatest mass
migration crisis ever to hit the United States. I would
go to the warres el Paso sector, I mean El
Paso Border Patrol sector. It's one of nine because it
was very emblematic of what was happening everywhere on the border.
You could see runners being smuggled through to you know,
(13:29):
to get through into the interior. And then you had
on the other side of town give ups, all the
thousands of people that would just walk over and give
themselves up to border patrol. It was all there, and
more than a million people crossed into the United States
through that sector. So I used to like to go there,
and I'd spend a lot of time on the Warres
(13:51):
side and on the El Paso side, and it was
always just pandemonium over there, always crazy, insane, couldn't believe
your eyes in that sector, the thousands of people, the
hundreds of thousands of people crossing in. So I thought
it would be good to go back post Trump, with
all the policies that he's put in place, detain and
(14:15):
deport policies mainly, which made people not want to come anymore.
And it was just dead over there. I mean, the
numbers coming across, you know, had fallen from you know,
thousands a day to you know, fifteen or twenty. I mean,
it was in those people and all of those people
(14:37):
were runners. They're no more give ups nobody was just
giving themselves up anymore because they all get detained and
then immediately deported. So they're all runners over there, and
runners are down.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
You quote one L Paso Border Patrol spokesman who said,
there's days they call them zero days. We're not a
single crossing is reported in L Passa unbelievable. I mean really,
I mean even during the first Trump administration, you didn't
have the numbers down that low border length. We're looking
(15:11):
at about less than five.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Hundred and often less than three hundred crossings a day,
and I mean from Tijuana to matam morrist you know,
the whole border is down, you know, by you know,
ninety eight percent or something. I mean, it's just unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Well, we've been covering the border stuff here, I mean
for over twenty years, and all I'd hear from politicians
both sides it's like, well, we have to look at
the complex root causes. We need comprehensive immigration reform. These
words comprehensive complex, and Trump proved it was really simple
(15:53):
and you could do it really fast and it's worked.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
I'm pretty sure I've come on your show where you've
asked me, you know how long would it take Trump
to shut it down? And I've said it take about
one hour of the first day. They could have this
thing shut down. It didn't take a big Senate bill.
Remember they're always told, oh my god, we have to
have the Senate bill, the Senate bill, the Senate build,
we have to have the Senate bill. I have no
(16:18):
authority to shut this down if only I had the
Senate build comprehensive immigration refort. None of that is true.
None of that was true. All you needed to do
was follow existing legal requirements in the law, the Immigration
and Nationality Act. You must detain everybody. You must not
(16:39):
release anybody, and you must deport everybody who is lawfully deportable.
And that's what they did, and they get they staffed
it up and reversed what Biden had been doing, which
was to release everybody into the country that came to
the porter. Of course, they would come by the millions
(17:02):
if you did that. We all knew it. So all
Trump had to do was just no longer release them,
but to deport them and detain them. And Waila, nobody
wants to spend five thousand or ten thousand dollars in
smuggling fees if you're going to end up back at
square one, broke and in debt. It's that simple, really.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Todd, thanks for coming on. It's been quite a journey
covering this all these years. We'll talk with you again soon.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
I appreciate it all right.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Todd Bensman Center for Immigration Studies CIS dot org. Also
the Daily Wire dot com, and we discussed sentinel smuggling
or sentinel seizures is down fifty percent since the election.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
See it works. He just enforced the law.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
And I wonder how many people are self deporting. That's
the next thing I want to hear about when we
come back. I know something that's gone on for decades,
like the illegal immigration went on for decades. Also, what's
gone on for decades is our jobs, especially manufacturing jobs,
going to foreign countries. And everybody has always said, well,
(18:14):
there's nothing you can do about it. Well Trump is
trying to do something about that. It's the tariffs. We're
going to give you a rundown in case you don't
really understand what's going on, because most people don't.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
That's next.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
There has been a NonStop, obsessive tariff coverage. Today the
stock market took a big dump. Dal Jones average was
down almost seventeen hundred points. You've probably heard something about it,
and maybe it blindsided you.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Maybe you'd heard rumblings why is this going on?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Well, Trump put a tariff on just about every country
on the planet, one hundred and eighty of them a
ten percent tariff. Mexico, Canada got twenty five percent tariffs, China,
I believe, got a thirty four percent tariff, and then
there were certain tariffs for certain products from certain countries.
Theres a lot of tariffs. If I gave you all
(19:18):
the numbers, your eyes would glaze over and you fall asleep,
and then you wouldn't be listening. It's one of those
stories that actually works better to look at charts. I
would recommend the Wall Street Journal had a good article today.
You've heard about the trade imbalance. We send a lot
more US money to foreign countries buying their products than
(19:39):
those countries send to US. I mean, we have a
trade imbalance with China three hundred billion dollars. We spend
three hundred billion more dollars on Chinese imports. Then they
spend on American imports there. And in Europe it's two
hundred and thirty five billion more. Mexico is one hundred
and seventy one billion more. You just add up those
(20:00):
two countries and throw in Vietnam and South Korea and Canada.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
And and pretty close.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
You know, you're talking over a trillion dollars of our
money going to these foreign countries. And that's our net
deficit here. And people have been talking about that for years.
Nobody's ever done anything about it. You know what else
everybody's talked about for years, how so many millions of
American American jobs.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Went overseas to China.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
I mean, we let in China into the World Trade
Organization and set up these trade deals with China, and
we lost millions and millions of American manufacturing jobs.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Classic cases is Apple.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
They have a deal with a company in China where
they make phones Apple, you know iPhones. People are paid
very little money, really nasty working conditions, long hours, to
the point, you remember this story several years ago they
put up suicide nets around the roof of the building
because employees were climbing to the top.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
And we're trying to jump.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Now, what's funny is you could draw a pretty big
crowd and a lot of noisy people would come to
a protest slavery right here in this country. But we
subsidize slavery by the billions. Because everybody's got all these
technology products that we don't manufacture here. It's manufactured there
(21:26):
because those poor people are paid slave wages, and we're
all cool with it. You know, it's a free country.
I'm just pointing out the massive hypocrisy. Though you have
lots of products in your house that are made by slaves.
I'm not asking you to care. I can't say I
particularly care, but that's what's destroyed the manufacturing jobs. And
(21:51):
there are a lot of young American men who really
have nothing to do. They're underemployed, unemployed, they're on dry
they're playing video games. They're not getting married, they're not
having families, buying homes and having kids because they need
to work in those factories. They're really just not designed
to work anywhere else. So for decades we sent the
(22:13):
jobs overseas. For decades, we've bought cheap stuff from these
countries and they don't buy ours. And everybody gets excited
over buying cheap products here because hey, look at that.
You know, I can save a few bucks at Walmart,
and we're cheap rags, which somehow became fashionable. I really, honestly,
(22:35):
I can't believe most people look like slobs. If we
just noticed go to the supermarket, even a restaurant, going
an airplane. Good lord, we're like the worst dressed nation
in the country. You know, tribes that run around naked
are dressed better than we are. And it's because people
people by cheap, disposable stuff and it's created all these
(22:57):
jobs overseas, and we don't you know, we don't make anything.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Well it's too expensive here.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Yeah, yeah, because we pay we pay good wages, which
which makes for a healthy society.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Then you don't have so many young men.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Drifting aimless, getting lost in drugs and alcohol and video
games and whatever else social media scrolling all day.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
There's been a.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Big societal cost to cheap stuff. And that's something all
the economists never accounted for. They acknowledge it years and
years later, well after the fact that it's like, yeah,
we didn't really factor in what it would do to society.
We didn't realize we would hollow out the rust belt,
in the Northeast and in the Midwest. There's consequences to
(23:43):
this Trump when he you know, make America great again
is such a loaded phrase now, but he's of the
last generation that remembers when we made stuff and people
had good jobs in manufacturing and you could own a
(24:04):
house and raise a family like my dad did on
factory work.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Because he did he had no education.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
He was taking out of school in the eighth grade,
captured by the Nazis from his house when he was fourteen,
and eventually ended up here in America, but got married,
had two kids, my brother and I, and he was
able to do that, you know, on a relatively low salary.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
And we also built housing back then.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
It wasn't like California is now, where the entire all
of the regulatory process constipates the construction of affordable homes.
It's so we don't have homes and the prices are
too high, and well, I can go on and on
in that direction, but getting back to the getting back
to this. So he said, well, let's fix this. Everyone's
(24:58):
always said, can't we job good jobs back to America,
not burger flipping jobs, not aimless pushing paperwork jobs. But
we're making things. We're creating things with stuff of value.
You know, do we have to give our wealth away
to other countries? They're not buying our stuff. They are
(25:19):
taxing us. Their tariffs are bigger in a lot of
cases than ours. And then you have countries like Mexico
sending us all the fentanyl and the MEF and China
sending Mexico the ingredients for the fentanyl. So Trump is saying,
what are you doing. We're taking in poison, killing one
hundred thousand people a year two years ago. You know
(25:40):
how many people died of fentanyl poison in this country
one hundred and fourteen thousand, courtesy of Mexico and China. Well, yeah,
they ought to be penalized. Geez, they take the jobs
away from us, We buy their junk, and as a
side dish, they they kill one hundred thousand of our
of our citizens. Shouldn't there be a punishment? Shouldn't we
(26:04):
start negotiating all this stuff. I'm not saying this is
gonna work. Prices are probably gonna go up in the
short term term. I don't know the outcome here, nobody does,
but I am interested as to why his administration wanted
to do this, and it's problems that have gone on
for decades nobody else addressed. It's it's it's it's not.
(26:30):
They're not doing it to crash the economy. Believe me,
you'd be way more popular not crashing the economy. But
what's been going on, what we've allowed these countries to
do to us, to or our way of life, I mean,
actually killing our people without any response of any kind.
We could do this, or you know, we could go
(26:50):
to war. Right when we had Todd Bensman on last
half hour, right Fentanel smuggling is down fifty percent of
the border. Now we could have had to go to
war our military against the drug cartels and stop them
that way. Or we could slap a twenty five percent
tariff on the Mexican government and they took care of
(27:12):
the problem. They're the ones who leaned on the cartels.
So it's it's way, way, way too early to issue
any proclamation or predictions.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
More coming up.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI Am sixty.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
We got Conway coming up in moments and Mark Thompson
as well. You know, I was talking about how our
our bad trade policy for decades, and this is at
the heart of why Trump instituted these tariffs. You know,
there have been millions and millions of manufacturing jobs lost.
All those guys who are more suited for factory work.
(27:54):
What are they doing, well, a lot of mart working
at all, or they're doing drugugs, or they're living in
the basement. They're not having families because they don't have
meaningful work. We sent their jobs overseas. Some of them
maybe got into the fast food business. And Gavin Newsom
intruded in that industry by signing a bill mandating a
(28:21):
twenty dollars an hour minimum wage. It was written by
an idiot named Chris Holden, who was an assemblyman out
of Los Angeles. His dad was a politician, Nate Holden.
His dad was an idiot. Chris is an idiot. And
so a year ago this week, this law kicked in
twenty dollars an hour fast food minimum wage. You know
(28:42):
what's happened in the last year, twenty two thousand jobs
have been lost in the fast food industry. Twenty two thousand.
So as the federal government sent the manufacturer jobs overseas,
fast food jobs became one of the few ports in
(29:07):
the store. Here comes Gavin Newsom to the rescue. Oh,
they're doing it for the workers, right, the unions who
bribed the hell out of people like Newism twenty two thousand.
Not only that, but fast food prices in California have
gone up fourteen and a half percent of a year.
How's that for inflation? Fourteen and a half percent. That's
(29:31):
double the national average. Eighty nine percent of all restaurants
in the state reduced employee hours after the minimum wage
law passed eighty nine percent and eighty seven percent plan
more cuts in the next year. They're going to automate
all the restaurants. We were talking about this the other day.
(29:53):
They're going to have AI working the order box really now.
Instead of getting a muffled, scratchy voice often they can't
speak English, you are going to get a clear AI
voice who's going to understand your order, and they're going
to get that to you far quicker than humans are
doing it now. And they accelerated all this because of
(30:16):
the minimum wage Conway's.
Speaker 5 (30:18):
Here he now, Hey, no, let's go let's roll around
or fly around here. That's what we do around here.
We got a big show, really big show. Alex Stone
is coming on with us. That guy is always great,
and it's we're talking about the tariffs. You know how
they're gonna affect the local businesses here in southern California.
And we have a guy who runs Santa Anita. We
got a big day coming up the day after tomorrow,
(30:39):
the Sanity to Derby. I got tickets, John, if you
want to slide out there with a lovely one. And
then we also have Ted Ziggenbush, world class handicapper. We're
going to try to figure out who's gonna win. Dean
Sharp will be on at five twenty. But you know
what a lot of people don't know this about John Coleblt.
But your wife was once addicted to horse racing?
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Is that true? I wouldn't say addict? Did Where did
you go on your first date with her? It was
the second day and the second win. I think to Monmouth,
that's a racetrack in the Jersey Shore. And because she
had to bet? Uh?
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Is that it true?
Speaker 2 (31:15):
No, she didn't have to bet. Maybe I make the
story something silly to do, but didn't. She picked like
a six races in a five, five out of six.
She went Wow, and and the sixth one they came
in second. Oh my god, you could have You wouldn't
even'n have to be sitting here to be at sant
and need every day with that kind of luck. And
she was looking at the charts. I gotta take her
out there. She claims she was analyzing the charts. She's
(31:36):
good with numbers. She can she can do this, Is
that right?
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Yeah? Still, I don't know.
Speaker 5 (31:40):
We haven't gone in a while. We got to get
out there. Yeah, look, I was shocked she could. She
could put us in private jet. That's why I thought
maybe i'd have marry this one. Yeah, exactly. But that's
so great. I mean to have a second date at
the racetrack. Yeah, that's that's that's a touchdown, you know,
us another sports.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
And that it wasn't my to do, right.
Speaker 5 (32:03):
Yeah, you get twenty five minutes between races, but that
was back before you could bet off track.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Yeah, so you had to talk for twenty minutes. Yeah,
there's nine hundred races going. Don't remember why we did that.
It seems like absurd now.
Speaker 5 (32:15):
But a turf club, table service, waiter, waitress, no, no bleach.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Oh that's when I had a side job in addition
to radio. Oh, I was working at a miniature golf course. Oh,
I get it. Okay, so you're a rail bird.
Speaker 5 (32:28):
I was the catch boy, right, you were the guy
in the rail with mustard on you somehow in the mustards.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
We're doing two dollars bets. But at least we've bet
a profit.
Speaker 5 (32:38):
Right, But that's more than you bet, now, that's right,
that is that's two dollars more than I bet.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
We got to get her out there. What's her name again, Deborah? Deborah?
All right, we got to get her out there.
Speaker 5 (32:49):
You know, listen, I'll pay for everything if she can.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
You know, pick those horses, you can, you can work
out a deal.
Speaker 5 (32:56):
Okay, we lunch. I'll get a lemo or uber. I
assume the magic still works.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
Plus I love the fact that she's used to two
dollars gamblers.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
I can do that, right, that's all you got, all right?
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Joy?
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Is Thompson coming in?
Speaker 5 (33:15):
Oh yeah, Thompson's here, okay, eating hitting lamb in the
other room.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Conway Thompson. Michael Krazer is the news live in the
CAFI twenty four our newsroom. Hey, you've been listening to
the John Cobalt Show podcast. You can always hear the
show live on KFI Am six forty from one to
four pm every Monday through Friday, and of course, anytime
on demand on the iHeartRadio app
Can't. I am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobel Podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
We're on from one until four after four o'clock John
Cobelt Show on demand. That's the podcast version, and you
could pick up on what you missed. Coming up later
on the hour, we will explain for those of you
joining us in this hour, what why the Trump tariffs
(00:23):
are happening, what's led up to this this point, And
just to reiterate that nobody really knows what's going to happen.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
There's a as usual with Trump, there's.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
A lot of hysteria, there are a lot of wild predictions,
not a whole lot of detailed explanation, and the lot
of a lot of nope. You know, everybody's like compulsively
makes predictions. It was just in a very strange culture
and just saying, you know what, we don't know what's
going to happen here. Maybe it's not going to work out,
(00:54):
but there's there's a there's a strong reason he's doing this.
It's not just to blow up the economy. We'll get
into that coming up after three point thirty. What's working
out for sure is his border policies, because the number
of people crossing the border has dropped by well over
ninety five percent now and the amount of fentanyl being
(01:16):
seized at the border has dropped fifty percent since the
November election. And we are going to talk with Todd
Bensman on He's with the Center for Immigration Studies. He's
a journalist who's been stationed at the border for a
number of years now and increasingly getting very lonely. There's
not many people crossing anymore. Todd, how are.
Speaker 3 (01:36):
You feeling pretty lonely actually down here in Del Rio, Texas,
right on the border today. Yeah, this is a bit
of good news from the border for a change. People
always accuse me of being kind of depressing in my
reports on the border, but you know, remember the president's
(01:58):
agenda to shut down the flow of fetanyl is an
apex issue. I mean, this is at the very top
of the chart. This is the reason why he's doing
tariffs on Mexico, for example, to get them to act.
And it turns out that in fact, they have gotten
(02:19):
the Mexicans to go kinetic down there in the country.
Part of the country where the feanyl is all produced,
made over ten thousand arrests they're breaking labs up, they're
busting everybody, the cooks. They're using military force in especially
(02:41):
a town called Culiacon in Sineloas State, which is as
well over one hundred labs. It's kind of considered the
center of production for fetanyl, which is the course you
responsible for killing one hundred and fifty thousand Americans or
something like that. And it's looking pretty good. The numbers
(03:02):
are down of seizures at the border and by the way,
the seat when the caesar, when I say the caizuars
are down, they're down by you know, more than fifty percent,
using far more police, more availability of troops, far more cops, eyes,
(03:23):
ears are available for this. So the fact that they're
down this much with that much attention on it means
that the smuggling is probably far down, even more down
than fifty percent. That's just the seizures we're talking about,
which is an indicator. That's if that holds. And they're
(03:45):
telling me, the administration is telling me that March is
going to be even lower than January and February for
seizures and smuggling, and American deaths are down too, So
it looks like it's it's working. I mean, it's really
an incredible story because this is about life and death
(04:05):
real you know, American lives lost to this scourge of fentanyl.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
I've seen estimates of seventy to one hundred thousand people
dying of fentanyl poisoning.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
Yeah, it's awful. I mean, the last twelve months ending September,
I think it was eighty nine thousand dead Americans, which
was a decline from what it was a year priory in.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
A single year, eighty nine thousand a single year, and
the number had gone down.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
That's overwhelming.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Yeah, that's why this is such an important story because
you know, it's not about economy and you know your
pocketbook and the price of toyota or something. This is
about people living or dying in large numbers.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Well, and let me point something out here that you
said just a couple of minutes ago, Trump laid a
twenty five percent tariff on Mexico in part because it
was a way to force Mexico into shutting off the
fentanyl supply.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
And it worked.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Yeah, but I've heard but until you just told that story,
I had not heard that reported anywhere making the connection.
But why the tariff happened and the effect that the
tariff had on getting Mexico to severely restrict the fentinyl supply.
I mean, that's incredible, and am I wrong? It seems
(05:39):
to be unreported.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
It's it's very underreported. I wouldn't say it's totally unreported.
For example, if you read my piece in the Daily Wire,
I go into quite a bit of detail about a
New York Times reporter in Mexico City who went to
kule Icon before and after the Trump tariff threat and
(06:02):
before you know, it's full blown terror, you know, fentanyl production.
Within a month or two after the tariff threat, there
was no fentanyl production out of Culiacon the Mexicans. She
had gone in there and everybody in all their sources,
and everybody told her it was all shut down. She
serendipitously witnessed as she was driving around town, Mexicans rating
(06:27):
these labs right in front of her. So, I mean,
the Mexicans had to get serious about fentanyl because you know,
their economy was at stake over this. And so you'll
see in the new information that I bring to light
in my Daily Wire piece comes from my interview with
(06:49):
Derek Maltz, who is head of the Dea, the Drug
Enforcement Administration, and this has his finger on the pulse
of this whole thing. And he told me that the
Mexican cartels have made a strategic business shift to stop
(07:11):
producing fentanyl and to stop smuggling it into the United
States because it's just bad for all their other business.
This thing is so toxic for politically, for them and
for the Mexicans that you know, maybe we should just
get rid of that one line, one product line. And
he said that they have intelligence showing that, you know,
(07:34):
they're just getting out of the fentanyl smuggling business altogether.
So if that holds, If that's true and everything holds,
we should see further declines and a lot of live saved,
a lot of live saved on it because of this
tariff threaten And to me, that's extraordinary, you know what
Derek Maltz was telling me. If that's true, and the
(07:58):
time will tell, and not much time, just another couple
of months, we should have a really good feel for
whether that's true.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
I mean, I was wondering when I was reading your report,
because the cartels make billions of dollars smuggling drugs and
humans across the border. And if you strip fentinyl out
of their distribution system. They're still going to want that money,
so they're now sending the drugs elsewhere in the world.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Well Montz told me that they believe right now that
they may not stop fentanyl production. They just may shift
it over to the Europeans and try to get as
much of it over into Europe as they can. They
won't be as profitable still, it's a lot farther and
the risks are higher, and they'll probably be seizures and whatnot.
(08:48):
But they are increasing cocaine and math, he said, to
make up for the revenue shortfall. But you know, I mean,
those are terrible drugs. I'm not saying that they're not terrible,
but you know, that's a strategic business decision. You know,
cocaine does not wipe out ninety thousand Americas.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Sent Inel was instant death and you only needed a
few grains. If you inhaled it, then you're you're dead.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Right, So this is this is early news. We're two
months into the campaign. I think we're about to see
a third month of decline, which which is the first
to These are the first declines in fentanyl seizures in
ten years. That means the smugglings down, the drugs are down,
(09:38):
it's not coming in as much, and so that continues. Then,
you know, I point out that, you know, this whole
thing was an amazing achievement. Really. I mean, this is
you know, just say, tens of thousands of lives.
Speaker 2 (09:52):
Because we were something we were told for ten years
that it couldn't be done. So many people said that
there was no way to stop the drug flow. No
matter what you did, they would find a way around it.
Well it turns out they can't find a way, or
they've decided not to go looking.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
They'd rather try other markets.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
We're told to, you know, ball up into a fetal
position and just take the beating. But apparently not. I think.
I mean, there's good Mexican media reporting as well, excellent.
They're covering it that the Mexicans have really gone to
war and I mean they've made ten thousand arrests down
(10:30):
there for fentanyl. They've broken up all the laps in culiacon.
That's just remarkable. And it doesn't look like the cartels
are going to war over it like I thought and
some others of us thought might happen. I think they're
just gonna they're gonna switch off the spigot for fentanyl.
I mean, I hope they're gonna. It's just too politically
(10:53):
toxic for them.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Can you hang on for another segment?
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Sure you have time, because you also have a second
article out about it's called Then and Now at the
Southern Border, and you've toured extensively. You're finding a lot
of emptiness where there used to be thousands of illegal
aliens trying to make their way into the country, and
it's a pretty stark difference. We'll talk with Todd Bensman,
(11:18):
Center for Immigration Studies. He has pieces in various places.
He's got something like he said, with the Daily Wire,
Daily Wire dot com, CIS dot org, Todd Bensman b
ns m AN and he's one of the foremost journalists
when it comes to chronicling what's been going on at
the border for the last I don't know how many years.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
John coblt Moistline Tomorrow eight seven seven, Moist staighty six
eight seven seven, Moist eighty six, Last Call, or use
the talkback feature on the iHeartRadio app and hear yourself
rant and rave and complain and be angry. We continue
with Todd Bensman. In the last segment, he talked about
how fentidel smuggling is down dramatically. It's dropped fifty percent
(12:12):
since the November election, even though we have a far
larger law enforcement presence there. It's really the whole business
is drying up. The cartels are looking to other countries
on other continents to sell their deadly fentadel. And the
other story he wrote because he writes on Daily Wire
(12:35):
dot com. This one is on the Center for Immigration
STUDIESCIS dot org. Is you know, he spent a lot
of time wandering around Mexico during the heyday of extreme
illegal immigration and now it's tumbleweeds blown across the desert. Todd,
talk about it just really struck the way you described
(12:55):
the emptiness along these immigration card that used to be
quite crowded, and talk about what you've seen in the difference.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Well, all through the four years of the greatest mass
migration crisis ever to hit the United States. I would
go to the warres el Paso sector, I mean El
Paso Border Patrol sector. It's one of nine because it
was very emblematic of what was happening everywhere on the border.
You could see runners being smuggled through to you know,
(13:29):
to get through into the interior. And then you had
on the other side of town give ups, all the
thousands of people that would just walk over and give
themselves up to border patrol. It was all there, and
more than a million people crossed into the United States
through that sector. So I used to like to go there,
and I'd spend a lot of time on the Warres
(13:51):
side and on the El Paso side, and it was
always just pandemonium over there, always crazy, insane, couldn't believe
your eyes in that sector, the thousands of people, the
hundreds of thousands of people crossing in. So I thought
it would be good to go back post Trump, with
all the policies that he's put in place, detain and
(14:15):
deport policies mainly, which made people not want to come anymore.
And it was just dead over there. I mean, the
numbers coming across, you know, had fallen from you know,
thousands a day to you know, fifteen or twenty. I mean,
it was in those people and all of those people
(14:37):
were runners. They're no more give ups nobody was just
giving themselves up anymore because they all get detained and
then immediately deported. So they're all runners over there, and
runners are down.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
You quote one L Paso Border Patrol spokesman who said,
there's days they call them zero days. We're not a
single crossing is reported in L Passa unbelievable. I mean really,
I mean even during the first Trump administration, you didn't
have the numbers down that low border length. We're looking
(15:11):
at about less than five.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Hundred and often less than three hundred crossings a day,
and I mean from Tijuana to matam morrist you know,
the whole border is down, you know, by you know,
ninety eight percent or something. I mean, it's just unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
Well, we've been covering the border stuff here, I mean
for over twenty years, and all I'd hear from politicians
both sides it's like, well, we have to look at
the complex root causes. We need comprehensive immigration reform. These
words comprehensive complex, and Trump proved it was really simple
(15:53):
and you could do it really fast and it's worked.
Speaker 3 (15:58):
I'm pretty sure I've come on your show where you've
asked me, you know how long would it take Trump
to shut it down? And I've said it take about
one hour of the first day. They could have this
thing shut down. It didn't take a big Senate bill.
Remember they're always told, oh my god, we have to
have the Senate bill, the Senate bill, the Senate build,
we have to have the Senate bill. I have no
(16:18):
authority to shut this down if only I had the
Senate build comprehensive immigration refort. None of that is true.
None of that was true. All you needed to do
was follow existing legal requirements in the law, the Immigration
and Nationality Act. You must detain everybody. You must not
(16:39):
release anybody, and you must deport everybody who is lawfully deportable.
And that's what they did, and they get they staffed
it up and reversed what Biden had been doing, which
was to release everybody into the country that came to
the porter. Of course, they would come by the millions
(17:02):
if you did that. We all knew it. So all
Trump had to do was just no longer release them,
but to deport them and detain them. And Waila, nobody
wants to spend five thousand or ten thousand dollars in
smuggling fees if you're going to end up back at
square one, broke and in debt. It's that simple, really.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Todd, thanks for coming on. It's been quite a journey
covering this all these years. We'll talk with you again soon.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
I appreciate it all right.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Todd Bensman Center for Immigration Studies CIS dot org. Also
the Daily Wire dot com, and we discussed sentinel smuggling
or sentinel seizures is down fifty percent since the election.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
See it works. He just enforced the law.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
And I wonder how many people are self deporting. That's
the next thing I want to hear about when we
come back. I know something that's gone on for decades,
like the illegal immigration went on for decades. Also, what's
gone on for decades is our jobs, especially manufacturing jobs,
going to foreign countries. And everybody has always said, well,
(18:14):
there's nothing you can do about it. Well Trump is
trying to do something about that. It's the tariffs. We're
going to give you a rundown in case you don't
really understand what's going on, because most people don't.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
That's next.
Speaker 4 (18:27):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
There has been a NonStop, obsessive tariff coverage. Today the
stock market took a big dump. Dal Jones average was
down almost seventeen hundred points. You've probably heard something about it,
and maybe it blindsided you.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Maybe you'd heard rumblings why is this going on?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
Well, Trump put a tariff on just about every country
on the planet, one hundred and eighty of them a
ten percent tariff. Mexico, Canada got twenty five percent tariffs, China,
I believe, got a thirty four percent tariff, and then
there were certain tariffs for certain products from certain countries.
Theres a lot of tariffs. If I gave you all
(19:18):
the numbers, your eyes would glaze over and you fall asleep,
and then you wouldn't be listening. It's one of those
stories that actually works better to look at charts. I
would recommend the Wall Street Journal had a good article today.
You've heard about the trade imbalance. We send a lot
more US money to foreign countries buying their products than
(19:39):
those countries send to US. I mean, we have a
trade imbalance with China three hundred billion dollars. We spend
three hundred billion more dollars on Chinese imports. Then they
spend on American imports there. And in Europe it's two
hundred and thirty five billion more. Mexico is one hundred
and seventy one billion more. You just add up those
(20:00):
two countries and throw in Vietnam and South Korea and Canada.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
And and pretty close.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
You know, you're talking over a trillion dollars of our
money going to these foreign countries. And that's our net
deficit here. And people have been talking about that for years.
Nobody's ever done anything about it. You know what else
everybody's talked about for years, how so many millions of
American American jobs.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Went overseas to China.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
I mean, we let in China into the World Trade
Organization and set up these trade deals with China, and
we lost millions and millions of American manufacturing jobs.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
Classic cases is Apple.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
They have a deal with a company in China where
they make phones Apple, you know iPhones. People are paid
very little money, really nasty working conditions, long hours, to
the point, you remember this story several years ago they
put up suicide nets around the roof of the building
because employees were climbing to the top.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
And we're trying to jump.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
Now, what's funny is you could draw a pretty big
crowd and a lot of noisy people would come to
a protest slavery right here in this country. But we
subsidize slavery by the billions. Because everybody's got all these
technology products that we don't manufacture here. It's manufactured there
(21:26):
because those poor people are paid slave wages, and we're
all cool with it. You know, it's a free country.
I'm just pointing out the massive hypocrisy. Though you have
lots of products in your house that are made by slaves.
I'm not asking you to care. I can't say I
particularly care, but that's what's destroyed the manufacturing jobs. And
(21:51):
there are a lot of young American men who really
have nothing to do. They're underemployed, unemployed, they're on dry
they're playing video games. They're not getting married, they're not
having families, buying homes and having kids because they need
to work in those factories. They're really just not designed
to work anywhere else. So for decades we sent the
(22:13):
jobs overseas. For decades, we've bought cheap stuff from these
countries and they don't buy ours. And everybody gets excited
over buying cheap products here because hey, look at that.
You know, I can save a few bucks at Walmart,
and we're cheap rags, which somehow became fashionable. I really, honestly,
(22:35):
I can't believe most people look like slobs. If we
just noticed go to the supermarket, even a restaurant, going
an airplane. Good lord, we're like the worst dressed nation
in the country. You know, tribes that run around naked
are dressed better than we are. And it's because people
people by cheap, disposable stuff and it's created all these
(22:57):
jobs overseas, and we don't you know, we don't make anything.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Well it's too expensive here.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Yeah, yeah, because we pay we pay good wages, which
which makes for a healthy society.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Then you don't have so many young men.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Drifting aimless, getting lost in drugs and alcohol and video
games and whatever else social media scrolling all day.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
There's been a.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Big societal cost to cheap stuff. And that's something all
the economists never accounted for. They acknowledge it years and
years later, well after the fact that it's like, yeah,
we didn't really factor in what it would do to society.
We didn't realize we would hollow out the rust belt,
in the Northeast and in the Midwest. There's consequences to
(23:43):
this Trump when he you know, make America great again
is such a loaded phrase now, but he's of the
last generation that remembers when we made stuff and people
had good jobs in manufacturing and you could own a
(24:04):
house and raise a family like my dad did on
factory work.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Because he did he had no education.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
He was taking out of school in the eighth grade,
captured by the Nazis from his house when he was fourteen,
and eventually ended up here in America, but got married,
had two kids, my brother and I, and he was
able to do that, you know, on a relatively low salary.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
And we also built housing back then.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
It wasn't like California is now, where the entire all
of the regulatory process constipates the construction of affordable homes.
It's so we don't have homes and the prices are
too high, and well, I can go on and on
in that direction, but getting back to the getting back
to this. So he said, well, let's fix this. Everyone's
(24:58):
always said, can't we job good jobs back to America,
not burger flipping jobs, not aimless pushing paperwork jobs. But
we're making things. We're creating things with stuff of value.
You know, do we have to give our wealth away
to other countries? They're not buying our stuff. They are
(25:19):
taxing us. Their tariffs are bigger in a lot of
cases than ours. And then you have countries like Mexico
sending us all the fentanyl and the MEF and China
sending Mexico the ingredients for the fentanyl. So Trump is saying,
what are you doing. We're taking in poison, killing one
hundred thousand people a year two years ago. You know
(25:40):
how many people died of fentanyl poison in this country
one hundred and fourteen thousand, courtesy of Mexico and China. Well, yeah,
they ought to be penalized. Geez, they take the jobs
away from us, We buy their junk, and as a
side dish, they they kill one hundred thousand of our
of our citizens. Shouldn't there be a punishment? Shouldn't we
(26:04):
start negotiating all this stuff. I'm not saying this is
gonna work. Prices are probably gonna go up in the
short term term. I don't know the outcome here, nobody does,
but I am interested as to why his administration wanted
to do this, and it's problems that have gone on
for decades nobody else addressed. It's it's it's it's not.
(26:30):
They're not doing it to crash the economy. Believe me,
you'd be way more popular not crashing the economy. But
what's been going on, what we've allowed these countries to
do to us, to or our way of life, I mean,
actually killing our people without any response of any kind.
We could do this, or you know, we could go
(26:50):
to war. Right when we had Todd Bensman on last
half hour, right Fentanel smuggling is down fifty percent of
the border. Now we could have had to go to
war our military against the drug cartels and stop them
that way. Or we could slap a twenty five percent
tariff on the Mexican government and they took care of
(27:12):
the problem. They're the ones who leaned on the cartels.
So it's it's way, way, way too early to issue
any proclamation or predictions.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
More coming up.
Speaker 4 (27:27):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI Am sixty.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
We got Conway coming up in moments and Mark Thompson
as well. You know, I was talking about how our
our bad trade policy for decades, and this is at
the heart of why Trump instituted these tariffs. You know,
there have been millions and millions of manufacturing jobs lost.
All those guys who are more suited for factory work.
(27:54):
What are they doing, well, a lot of mart working
at all, or they're doing drugugs, or they're living in
the basement. They're not having families because they don't have
meaningful work. We sent their jobs overseas. Some of them
maybe got into the fast food business. And Gavin Newsom
intruded in that industry by signing a bill mandating a
(28:21):
twenty dollars an hour minimum wage. It was written by
an idiot named Chris Holden, who was an assemblyman out
of Los Angeles. His dad was a politician, Nate Holden.
His dad was an idiot. Chris is an idiot. And
so a year ago this week, this law kicked in
twenty dollars an hour fast food minimum wage. You know
(28:42):
what's happened in the last year, twenty two thousand jobs
have been lost in the fast food industry. Twenty two thousand.
So as the federal government sent the manufacturer jobs overseas,
fast food jobs became one of the few ports in
(29:07):
the store. Here comes Gavin Newsom to the rescue. Oh,
they're doing it for the workers, right, the unions who
bribed the hell out of people like Newism twenty two thousand.
Not only that, but fast food prices in California have
gone up fourteen and a half percent of a year.
How's that for inflation? Fourteen and a half percent. That's
(29:31):
double the national average. Eighty nine percent of all restaurants
in the state reduced employee hours after the minimum wage
law passed eighty nine percent and eighty seven percent plan
more cuts in the next year. They're going to automate
all the restaurants. We were talking about this the other day.
(29:53):
They're going to have AI working the order box really now.
Instead of getting a muffled, scratchy voice often they can't
speak English, you are going to get a clear AI
voice who's going to understand your order, and they're going
to get that to you far quicker than humans are
doing it now. And they accelerated all this because of
(30:16):
the minimum wage Conway's.
Speaker 5 (30:18):
Here he now, Hey, no, let's go let's roll around
or fly around here. That's what we do around here.
We got a big show, really big show. Alex Stone
is coming on with us. That guy is always great,
and it's we're talking about the tariffs. You know how
they're gonna affect the local businesses here in southern California.
And we have a guy who runs Santa Anita. We
got a big day coming up the day after tomorrow,
(30:39):
the Sanity to Derby. I got tickets, John, if you
want to slide out there with a lovely one. And
then we also have Ted Ziggenbush, world class handicapper. We're
going to try to figure out who's gonna win. Dean
Sharp will be on at five twenty. But you know
what a lot of people don't know this about John Coleblt.
But your wife was once addicted to horse racing?
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Is that true? I wouldn't say addict? Did Where did
you go on your first date with her? It was
the second day and the second win. I think to Monmouth,
that's a racetrack in the Jersey Shore. And because she
had to bet? Uh?
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Is that it true?
Speaker 2 (31:15):
No, she didn't have to bet. Maybe I make the
story something silly to do, but didn't. She picked like
a six races in a five, five out of six.
She went Wow, and and the sixth one they came
in second. Oh my god, you could have You wouldn't
even'n have to be sitting here to be at sant
and need every day with that kind of luck. And
she was looking at the charts. I gotta take her
out there. She claims she was analyzing the charts. She's
(31:36):
good with numbers. She can she can do this, Is
that right?
Speaker 1 (31:38):
Yeah? Still, I don't know.
Speaker 5 (31:40):
We haven't gone in a while. We got to get
out there. Yeah, look, I was shocked she could. She
could put us in private jet. That's why I thought
maybe i'd have marry this one. Yeah, exactly. But that's
so great. I mean to have a second date at
the racetrack. Yeah, that's that's that's a touchdown, you know,
us another sports.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
And that it wasn't my to do, right.
Speaker 5 (32:03):
Yeah, you get twenty five minutes between races, but that
was back before you could bet off track.
Speaker 2 (32:07):
Yeah, so you had to talk for twenty minutes. Yeah,
there's nine hundred races going. Don't remember why we did that.
It seems like absurd now.
Speaker 5 (32:15):
But a turf club, table service, waiter, waitress, no, no bleach.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Oh that's when I had a side job in addition
to radio. Oh, I was working at a miniature golf course. Oh,
I get it. Okay, so you're a rail bird.
Speaker 5 (32:28):
I was the catch boy, right, you were the guy
in the rail with mustard on you somehow in the mustards.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
We're doing two dollars bets. But at least we've bet
a profit.
Speaker 5 (32:38):
Right, But that's more than you bet, now, that's right,
that is that's two dollars more than I bet.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
We got to get her out there. What's her name again, Deborah? Deborah?
All right, we got to get her out there.
Speaker 5 (32:49):
You know, listen, I'll pay for everything if she can.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
You know, pick those horses, you can, you can work
out a deal.
Speaker 5 (32:56):
Okay, we lunch. I'll get a lemo or uber. I
assume the magic still works.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
Plus I love the fact that she's used to two
dollars gamblers.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
I can do that, right, that's all you got, all right?
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Joy?
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Is Thompson coming in?
Speaker 5 (33:15):
Oh yeah, Thompson's here, okay, eating hitting lamb in the
other room.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Conway Thompson. Michael Krazer is the news live in the
CAFI twenty four our newsroom. Hey, you've been listening to
the John Cobalt Show podcast. You can always hear the
show live on KFI Am six forty from one to
four pm every Monday through Friday, and of course, anytime
on demand on the iHeartRadio app
The John Kobylt Show News
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John Kobylt
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