August 22, 2025 • 34 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 2 (08/22) - Lou Penrose fills in for John. Royal Oakes comes on the show to talk about the Menendez Brothers parole hearings. Pres. Trump goes after Mayor Bass and Gov. Newsom again. Democrats have a maturity problem. Newsom took a big gamble.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can't f I am six forty you're listening to the
John Cobelt podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Lou Penrose in for John Cobelt on the John Cobalt Show.
Eric Menendez has been denied parole by the California Review Board.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
He is one of the two.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Brothers convicted in eighty nine, thirty six years ago of
the shotgun slaying of the parents. Lyle now is the
younger brother and the one that everyone's looking to see
what the review ward will.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Decide on that.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
ABC News legal analyst Royal Oakes joins.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Us, well, thanks for coming on.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
What does it tell us about the denial of Eric
that we can glean might be the fate of Lyle.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
It's really not a very good sign now in a way,
Lyle has things that are you know, you could say,
or on the bright side, he's having different commissioners judge
him today, not the same people that slammed Eric. Plus
and his lawyers have had a chance overnight to kind
of absorb and learn from the tough questions of yesterday
to help prepare and also Wiles's violations of the rules
(01:11):
during his stay in prison. They're not as serious as
Eric I mean Eric was taking heroin and getting wine
to impact fraud schemes with gang members behind bars. This
is not good. Whereas Wiles's violations are, oh, well, he
hit a phone, hit a cigarette lightery got some Adidas
shoes that were contraband, and oh he blew off an
orientation meeting. Now, this isn't exactly a hanging offense. The
(01:34):
problem is both brothers have been labeled a moderate risk
of violent behavior after release. If they all released, and
when you're labeled moderate as opposed to lower high, you
only get out about twenty percent of the time. Plus
he was the guy who was the older brother who
concocted the scheme. And finally, Lou, the evidence is going
(01:55):
to come out if they repeat the allegations from before
about low While ask a girlfriend to lie and say
that Jose the dad raped and drugged her, he went
to a different girlfriend and asked her to lie and say, oh,
the mom kitty tried to poison the suns. This is
not the kind of thing that should be on your
(02:16):
record if you want to get parole.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Now, these are these are some messed up individuals, and
they were certainly messed up back when they were free
and they seem to have not been rehabilitated.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
How does that work? I mean, is there a formula?
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Is there? Is it one hundred percent on your behavior
while you're in prison or I mean there's been some
talk about well, it's not supposed to be the severity
of the crime. It's it's it's your behavior after you've
been placed in jail.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
The formula really involves three things. We call them the
three rs. First of all, rehabilitation is there evidence that
they're improved they did good things? Secondly, remorse Have they
really genuinely knowledge that they did bad things, that lied
about it and they're truly truly sorry. It's easy to
say that, but you know, you try to evaluate it.
And the third hour is risk? Are there risk outside
(03:10):
prison walls? Now, psychiatrists evaluate these guys and then report
to the board and they say, you know, we think
they're a low, moderate, or high risk and allow for example,
they said the guy's a narcissist Eric, They said, you know,
he's very vulnerable. He basically does what other people want
him to do. So all of these factors seed into
the bottom line conclusion. I got to tell you the
commissioners are pretty hardshaw on Eric yesterday, not that he
(03:32):
doesn't deserve it, but I mean, at one point the
commissioner said, well, we're denying parole and he come back
in three years, but if you come back and it's
just a pity party, then that's not going to get
you out, which you know is pretty stern language. Essentially,
Eric did get some good news. I mean, the commissioner
should have could have said come back in five years
or ten or fifteen. Instead they went for the minimum three.
(03:54):
And theoretically, if he keeps his nose claimed for three
years and if he convinces a strength that he really
is a changed man, you know, he might have a
shot while same thing or we don't know what's going
to happen Alile today, if he gets the same treatment
as Eric, he too couldn't give it another shot of
three years.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
What about the point of view, you know, I.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
I find it hard to feel bad for the bad guys, right,
but what about the point of view that, look, these
guys have been institutionalized now for more years than they've
been alive, and the fact that they were able to
get involved in bad things. Eric that he had access
to bad things to get involved in means the system
is imperfect either, and.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
What are these guys going to do.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
They know no other way of life but how to
survive in a prison which isn't necessarily always on the
straight and narrow. So the system itself does owe them
a little bit for allowing those kinds of problems to
be available to them.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
What about that point of view?
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Yeah, that's an interesting point, and it actually kind of
feeds into the idea of the Netflix specials. I mean,
there were hu nd and ten million views of the
Netflix dramatization and also the documentary, and that seemed to
swing public opinion. I mean, Kim Kardashian and other celebrities
have come out in favor of them. You know. The
difficulty is that doesn't really translate into persuading the parole
(05:18):
board members. You know. The other interesting angle, of course,
is where's the governor going to stand on this? Before
we heard that Eric was going to be kept in prison,
a lot of people were saying, well, you know, maybe
the governor will just grant them climency and if they
did get parole from the board, the governor has a
right with a month after the decision is sionalized to
(05:38):
veto it or bless it. I got to tell you, Lou,
I think it's impossible to imagine Newsom letting Eric out
now because if he lets him out, and if, as
the commissioners were worried about, he commits another violent crime,
you know, it's give me some explaining to do by
Gavin Newsom. If you think back in the day when
(05:59):
Dataka's running, that's exactly.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
What I was thinking. I'm like, this is his Ducaccus
moment now, and he doesn't want to have one of.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
Those, because, yeah, Willie Horton was a convicted murderer life
without parole, and the geniuses in the Massachusetts legislature said, well,
we should let guys like this have a furlough overy
a few weekends, you know, or a time or two
a year, you know, reconnect with the old gang. And
of course Willie Horton got out and he raped a
woman in assaulted a person and that was it for
(06:25):
Ducoccus's campaign, along with the picture of him in a
tank with a snoopy helmet on. So Yeahkevin Nissen doesn't
want to go through that. So that ship has sailed.
He's not going to let him out at all. But
here's the deal. They still have a chance to get
out with a new trial because they say there's new evidence.
And there is in the sense that at the trial
when they were convicted of murders, the evidence of Eric
(06:46):
writing a letter to his cousin nine months before the
murders saying, hey, dad's molesting me was not in the
record for whatever reason. And it's possible in the next
few months an LA judge will say, you know what,
if the original jury had known about Eric Sladder, they
might have found him not guilty. Therefore, under the law,
he is entitled to a new trial. It's kind of
(07:08):
a long shot, but Mark Garrigos, I think at this
point it's going to put all of his eggs in
that basket, and you know, we could have a total rerun.
Another Menendez trial for the third time.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Another Menendez trial in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
ABC News legal analyst Royal Oaks, thanks so much for
coming on.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Always good to catch up with you on this one.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
The mystery that will never go away and that it
has gotten even more complicated with.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
I mean, these claims of having all kinds.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Of contraband in prison and getting involved in schemes always
so amazing to me how industrious these people are behind bars.
Lou Penrose in for John Coblt on KFI AM six
forty Live Everywhere on the iHeartRadio Act.
Speaker 5 (07:50):
You're listening to John Coblt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Lou Penrose in for John Coblt on the John Cobalt Show,
Happy to be with you. The President took aim at
the mayor of Los Angeles from the press conference this
morning at the White House, both the Mayor of Los Angeles,
Karen Bass, and the governor of California.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
You have a newsom here's President Trump.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Well, Los Angeles is an example.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
You know, it's poorly run.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
We have a mayor that can't even get permise to
the people that lost that houses.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
The mayor is incompetent. The governor is incompetent.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
Gavin.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
I know Gavin very well. He's an incompetent guy with
a good lad of Vosh and he doesn't.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Get the job.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
JT.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
So a little fun there, President Trump using the BS word.
I had to bleep it out. You know what's interesting
is I don't have to bleep it out because he's
the President of the United States, but we bleep it
out anyway. But yeah, look, the President being very clear
about his thoughts on these two individuals. I think that
(08:57):
competence is going to become a bigger and bigger problem
for major Democrat leaders, because whether you agree or disagree
with the direction the president is taking an agency, a policy,
(09:18):
a position.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
He gets the.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Football into the end zone, he gets the job done.
He took over Washington, DC. You can say, oh, my goodness,
wells so agreedious. It's authoritarian, boy, what a dictator. Well,
legally he can do it, and he did it. He
didn't do as much.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
As he could legally do.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
He could take over the entire federal city. He took
over the police department, and crime rates have dropped. That's competence.
You may not like the National Guard in Georgetown, but
the National Guard in Georgetown somehow is stopping crime in
ward eight And that's effectiveness. And I've had this theory
(09:58):
for a while that Democrats in California they have problems
that they don't have political problems, although I don't I'm
a Republican. I don't agree with their political philosophies, but
I respect them. And back in the day, the only
difference between Democrats and Republicans was the route to solving
(10:23):
the problem.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Right, you want a better society.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Democrats have points of view philosophically that gets us there.
Republicans have different ones, but the goal was always the same,
a better society, right, more opportunity for people, whatever. And
Trump's philosophies are very different than Karen Bass or Gavin Newsom.
(10:46):
But Trump is achieving his goal, and I would argue
Newsom is not, and certainly Karen Vass is not. Nobody
thinks that she is competent. She cares a lot, ye,
and she's strong, but she's not getting the job done.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Look at the Palisades. I mean she's not getting.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
The job done, and throwing bombs at President Trump all
day doesn't.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Move her forward.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Nearly as much as she believes it does. So I
do think that Democrats have a competence problem. Show me
where a Democrat in a major city in America is
running the city well. Chicago, New York, Baltimore, DC, Birmingham,
(11:39):
Los Angeles, San Francisco, even San Diego.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Show me where it's.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Being run well, where people are flocking to those places
because the quality of life there is so good. Because
it's so safe, because it's such a great place to
raise a family. Right, people leave those places because they
want a safer quality of light, they want a better
quality of life, they want more opportunity, they want to
(12:05):
raise a family. So Trump is in a position to
reverse that trend because he's showing competence. So the Democrats,
particularly in California, truly have a competency problem. They have
another problem too. This is a kind of a theory
I've been working on. Democrats don't have a political problem
in California. They have a maturity problem in California. There
(12:30):
is a tremendous and this is new, this is novel.
They have a tremendous level of immaturity about them in
everything they do and everything they say. This latest effort
by Democrats and Sacramento, led by Governor Gaven Neussom to
gerrymannder congressional districts to get even with Texas is juvenile,
(12:55):
but it fits because they are very immature. I was
watching the reports out of the US Attorney's office. Billy A. Sale,
the the guy that was charged and ultimately they got him.
(13:17):
He was nailing nails or spikes into the tires of
the ice vehicles in the parking lot of the hotel
out in Rancho Cucamonga, you know, to flatten the tires
of the ice vehicles.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
When they got him, he was fifty four years old.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Fifty four, that's a pretty immature thing for a fifty
four year old to be doing. Like, what's wrong with you?
You're gonna be on camera. There's cameras that, you know,
scan the parking lot of a hotel, especially if they
are ice vehicles parked in it, And even if you're
(13:56):
not on camera, they'll just they'll get a new vehicle.
It's not gonna stop the ice raids. It's a very
immature act. And the other guy, the guy that was
they got him, he was the one on camera caught
throwing the rocks at the windshield of the ice vehicles.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
He was thirty nine years old. Thirty nine.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
In the middle of the day, throwing rocks at the
windshield of a vehicle driven by federal agents who were
doing their job in some kind of half assed form
of political protest. I thought, these are very immature people.
I mean, they're idiots anyway, but they're also immature. Like
(14:40):
at thirty nine, I had already had two of my
three sons, with the third on the way, and I
own my house like I was a grown up at
thirty nine. I was a grown up at twenty one.
But you see some very immature behavior. I see it
in all these demonstrations.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Nothing wrong with them.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
First Amendment right, right to protests, freely assemble.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Good for you. It's a little strange that you have
as much time that you have.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
But nevertheless, every time I see these Democrats protesting President Trump,
whether it's immigration enforcement or whatever it is, I see
it now in DC. They don't like there's like liberal
white people in DC mad at the cops for making DC.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
State very bizarre to me, but they're out there with.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Signs and like stupid statements on signs, like in the
middle of the day, and I'm thinking, don't you people
have jobs? So there's this immaturity among the Democrat base
and it finds itself really kind of it flows upward
into the lawmakers. You see Democrat lawmakers saying very foolish things,
(15:53):
making foolish statements about the end of democracy. And now
we're faced with this ballot proposition, We're gonna hear a
whole lot about prop fifty. My goodness, this Prop fifty
is going to be the biggest thing ever in California politics,
this special election coming up in November. And all's fair
in love and war, and we are at a political war.
(16:15):
I have said for a long time, this is what
a cold civil war looks like. There's we had, We've
had war, and we had a cold war. We've had
a civil war. We are now in the midst I believe,
of a cold civil war. And this redistrict thing for
the purpose of political games, ratchets, ratcheted. It's ratcheted up
(16:38):
a little bit, and it's legal to do and the
Governor's going to do it and we'll see where the
chips fall. But it is certainly a very immature reaction.
Fight fire with fire is immaturity, like children say that.
And now my governor, we'll talk about it more.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Coming up next.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Lou Penrose on KFI AM six forty Live everywhere on
the iHeartRadio app in for John Coblt.
Speaker 5 (17:07):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Lou Penrose in for John Coblt today, Happy Friday.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Good to have you along with us.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
So the ballot measure that will be presented to all
of us in California. Proposition fifty has already raised thirteen
million dollars. A Los Angeles Times pull out yesterday, forty
six percent will support the gerrymandering of these congressional districts.
Thirty six percent will not, with eighteen percent undecided, So
(17:44):
there's already a pretty good spread.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
But eighteen percent.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Undecided are going to have to fall somewhere, and it's
going to be an interesting question.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Now again, we'll talk.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Following the news at three with the California Assembly Member
Tom Lackey out Indale. We'll get the latest on this
and I'll bring you up the speed from my experience
with it too. I went through two redistrict things. I
worked for three members of Congress, and they changed the
(18:15):
congressional lines every ten years because the census comes out
every ten years, and I'll fill you in on that process.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
So what they're doing here is they are just changing
the rules of the game.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Frankly, now, originally the California Governor, Gaven Newsom wanted to
change the rules in the game in reaction to Texas.
They are changing the rules of the game quite Frankly
as well. But as it turned out, the Texas reference
was stripped out of the final piece of legislation that
was passed by the Assembly and the state Senate and
(18:51):
signed into law yesterday by Governor Gaven Newsom. So it's
it's all out war and it's completely legal. I know
they have been some attempts to say, well, this is
supposed to be a thirty day review period and this
and that, But at the end of the day, Democrats
are in control in Sacramento.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
They have a supermajority.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
They're able that they can gut an amend and get
around the thirty day rule, and they did it, and
now it's happening. They are spending unbelievable amounts of money
to get even with President Trump and see if they
can't make it so he's not in power after twenty
twenty six. So where are we the upcoming midterm elections.
(19:33):
We are four hundred and thirty eight days until the
November mid term election, So that's a goodly amount of
time for both sides to make the case whether there
ought to be gerrymandering on purpose for the purpose of
making sure more Democrats are elected, for the purpose of
giving the House of Representatives to the Democrats so they
can I don't know, stop Trump or impeach him or
(19:55):
whatever they want to do once they're in power. But
that's the goal here, and it is frankly refreshing to
see it so transparent. I'm glad they're not even like
Democrats are not even trying to mislead the people of California.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
They're being very honest.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
We are cheating because we think that Texas is cheating,
and so because Texas is cheating, we're gonna cheat to
and try and rig the lines so that there's a
better chance of Democrats getting elected. And they do that
by finding pockets of registered Democrats and making the lines
(20:32):
all squiggily wiggly to go go around that city and
under that city to go get that city because that
city has more registered Democrats.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
And the theory is if there are more registered Democrats in.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
That congressional district, there'll be more Democrat votes and a
Democrat will be get elected.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
And the plan is to get up to five more Democrats.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
And it's completely unfair, it's completely unethical, but it is
certainly legal and majority gets to rule. So we'll see
what the fault. Now, I think going forward, this is
a really bad idea. I think Democrats in California will
regret going here because it's blatantly political, and they're gonna say, yeah,
(21:20):
but lou democracy is in peril.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
The president is about to take over martial law of
the cities. He's taking over DC. He wants to go
over Chicago, he wants they go over Los Angeles. So
this is what dictators do, So we have to use
any means necessary to stop him. That's the route they're
gonna take. We'll see where that gets them. I actually
think they are unaware of how popular Trump is in California.
(21:48):
In twenty sixteen, Trump was not popular in California at
all over those four years, and then over the Biden administration,
Trump became far more popular in California. Now he still
loses the state, but he did way better in twenty
(22:08):
twenty four in California than he did in twenty twenty,
and in twenty twenty he did way better than he
did in twenty sixteen. Now I know that the home
of Trump arrangement syndrome is California. So the people that
don't like Trump really hate him. In California. They just
don't prefer him in Arizona. They don't prefer him in Massachusetts,
(22:34):
but in California it's vitriolic.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
And that's okay, right.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Leaders tend to engender that kind of passion. But there's
also people that were not sure, and after he was
elected in twenty sixteen, realized that all the hyperbole about
this man is going to be a dictator, this man
is going to be a dictator, and they're like, it
wasn't so bad. And then in twenty twenty four, this
(23:04):
man's going to be a dictator. This man's going to
be a dictator.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Look at j six blah blah blah, and problems.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Are getting solved, and the economy is strong, and there
is an inflation and all the tariff deals worked to
bring other nations to the table to negotiate a fair rate,
and the you know, problems are getting solved in the
Middle East and things are moving forward.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
And now they're planting grass in DC. So like the
hyperbole that.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
He was going to be a dictator on day one,
that fizzled out, and that makes people take a second look.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
So I think they're going to have more of an
uphill climb. Now, it all depends on a couple of things.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Democrats love to mislead with dishonest ballot titles, and they'll
come up with some miss you know, misleading dishonest bat
ballot title this time for sure, and we'll see what
we're left with. But so would this measure fail, It will
be a huge embarrassment for Gavin Newsom and a huge
(24:05):
stain on the political careers of these Democrats who voted
to effectively jerry manner the state up to cheat. We'll
talk about it coming up following the news with California
State assembly Member Tom Lackey.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
That's just about fifteen minutes. Lou Penrose in.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
For John Cobelt on the John Cobalt Show on k
i AM six forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 5 (24:30):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Louke Penrose info John Cobelt on the John Cobelt Show.
Coming up following the news at three, we'll talk with
California State assembly Member Tom Lackey about this redistricting effort.
It's called Proposition fifty. It will be on the ballot
November fourth and the likelihood of.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
It being defeated.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
I am frankly surprised, really, am Supper. I thought there
would be more Democrat defection. This is red hot because
Democrats now are actively admitting that they want to cheat
to offset what they're doing in Texas for the sole
(25:18):
purposes of getting Democrats elected, not having fair elections, having
unfair congressional districts to make the chances of a Democrat
getting elected.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
In that congressional district more likely to win the House
of Representatives. It's a bold move.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
As I said, war, all's fair in love and war,
and this is.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Cold civil war. This is what cold civil war looks like.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
When governors just forget about the rules of the game
and decide to rig the system to benefit their political party.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
That's exactly what's going on here. Now.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
You can say, well, look, Texas is doing it, why
can't we do it? You can, we are, but conditions
are a.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Little different in Texas.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
To be perfectly fair, they haven't come out to say
we want to get more Republicans. In California. They're saying
we want to get more Democrats. But it did start
with Texas, and Texas could have waited. Texas has a
little bit more credibility than California has. The arguments in Texas,
(26:30):
and I'm not I'm not a big.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Fan of this way of winning.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
I am partisan for sure, But at the end of
the day, you ought to be able to win an
election based on your ideas, and as a Republican, I
believe our ideas are better. So a good candidate with
some good personality ought to be able to take a
standard Republican playbook and sell it to the voter. And
(26:59):
if you can't sell it to the voter and you
don't win, then you're the candidates the problem, not the philosophy,
because I know smaller government, lower taxes, law and order
always wins.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
Smaller government, lower taxes.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
More freedom, and law and order is always better than
the alternative. And the other side is selling the alternative.
So you ought to be able to sell it. You
should not have to draw different lines. And that's what
they're choosing to do in Texas. Now in Texas, theyre
not saying that's the reason why. In Texas, they're saying,
look a couple things, you know, since two thousand, things
(27:36):
have changed in Texas significantly. A whole lot of people
from California moved here, a whole lot of people from
New York moved here, a whole lot of illegals.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Just got removed.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
And there are congressional districts where President Trump won in
Texas and the Democrat that's representing that congressional district wants
to impeach him, So that's kind of out of balance. Now,
it is possible that the same voter could vote for
President Trump and vote for a Democrat congresswoman that wants
(28:08):
to impte impeach President Trump.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
But that does seem odd.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
So the Texas State Legislature, who is empowered with drawing
those lines, chose to review it.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
And that's their rationale. Is you know, is that just
you know, political spin? Maybe I don't know. I don't
care what goes out in.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Texas, but what's going on in California is absolutely clear.
They want to elect more Democrats. They want to jerry
mander the lines so to increase the odds of a
Democrat getting elected by increasing the amount of Democrat voters
in the congressional district.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
And the maps look terrible.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
I mean, they are certainly not good for self representation
the way it's supposed to work is just supposed to
keep community together of interest. It's supposed to be county,
whole city hall where it's possible, right, keep cities all
in one congressional district, keep counties all in one congressional district,
keep communities of interest together. Agriculture communities are different than
(29:14):
major cities. Major cities are different than suburbs. And this
is all designed so that you are well represented to
the federal government for federal needs. So where there's a
lot of I don't know, retired military that ought to
be a VA hospital there, so that would make sense
(29:35):
to group that together. And it's never perfect, but you
can approach perfection if you take politics out of it.
And that's what the Citizens Commission was designed to do.
Because it's it's the nature of the beast right, it
makes all this. It's human nature as human nature. If
you are a Republican, you want a congressional district that's
(29:56):
got more Republicans registered than Democrats registered. That makes your
job easier to run for re election. If you're a Democrat,
you want to run in a district that's got a
higher Democrat registration than Republican registration, because that makes your
job easier. But at the end of the day, the
amount of registered Republicans or Democrats should not matter in
the congressional district when it's being drawn, it should be what.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Are the people, regardless of their political affiliation?
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Are they? You know, farmers, are they city people? Are
they serbinites? I mean, what's going on? And then what
part of the state is it? Northern California should probably
stay in Northern California, it shouldn't be most of Reading
and then a small squiggly line that dips down into
San Francisco to just increase the Democrat registration of that
weird shape district to ensure a Democrat wins.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Like, that's not the way it's supposed to be.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
So with respect to the whole Texas versus California fight,
I don't think it's fair. I think that Texas has
a whole other agenda going on, and the California one
is completely Trump arrangement syndrome.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
That's if they win.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
I still maintain that this is going to be a
hard sell because of Trump's performance in.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
California in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
I think that there's a lot of manifestations of Trump's
arrangement syndrome.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Denial is a big one.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Democrats in California hate Trump so much that they will
not accept the reality that Trump outperformed his twenty twenty numbers.
They will not accept the reality that he's popular. They
will not accept the reality that he won the popular vote.
They will not accept the reality that he won not
a few, all seven battleground states. The political reality, and
(31:48):
I have a policide agree.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
I'm a political scientist.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
The political reality from a dispassionate point of view is
the story wasn't Trump beat Harris.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
The story was it wasn't even close.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
And if you're a Democrat with Trump arrangement syndrome listening
right now, that angers you, like you cannot put that
anywhere in your brain. There's no place for you to
accept that reality. So you have to push back. Some
people are actually saying.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
The election was rigged, you know, the election was rigged.
That actually Kamala Harris won.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Like that that is easier, that's more palatable for a
Democrat in California with Trump arrangement syndrome than to recognize
that not only did he slaughter her politically in the election,
but he.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Flipped seven counties in California.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Imperial County, California was Democrat forever.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
It's like eighty five percent Latinos.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Democrats tell you that Trump and Latinos don't get along.
The Latinos hate Trump in California, and for the first
time in like dozens of years, Imperial County, California went
for Trump. How can that possibly be? Doesn't fit any
of the narrative that they're out there reporting. So there's
(33:20):
a couple of I think X factors that Democrats are
not willing to accept that I have factored in into
this question coming up in November, that I think is
going to be troublesome for them.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
We will see, now, I said.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Early polling Los Angeles Times pulling out this morning, had
the notion of the proposition favored by forty six percent,
the thirty six percent, but still eighteen percent undecided. So
there are enough people who don't know about it or
(33:56):
don't care to know about it, that ultimately we'll be
voting on it, and we have a goodly amount of
time to form a narrative, and what that narrative will
be remains to be seen. Because I also contend that
this is so inside baseball that most people are going
to vote, know, because they don't know and they don't care.
You get into redistricting and apportionment and all that other stuff,
(34:18):
and people like, give me a break, right, this isn't
a political year, So we'll talk about it coming up
following the News at three o'clock with California assembly Member
Tom Lockey. Lou Penrose in for John Cobelt on The
John Cobelt Show on KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Hey, you've been listening to the John Cobelt 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 f I am six forty you're listening to the
John Cobelt podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Lou Penrose in for John Cobelt on the John Cobalt Show.
Eric Menendez has been denied parole by the California Review Board.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
He is one of the two.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Brothers convicted in eighty nine, thirty six years ago of
the shotgun slaying of the parents. Lyle now is the
younger brother and the one that everyone's looking to see
what the review ward will.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Decide on that.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
ABC News legal analyst Royal Oakes joins.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Us, well, thanks for coming on.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
What does it tell us about the denial of Eric
that we can glean might be the fate of Lyle.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
It's really not a very good sign now in a way,
Lyle has things that are you know, you could say,
or on the bright side, he's having different commissioners judge
him today, not the same people that slammed Eric. Plus
and his lawyers have had a chance overnight to kind
of absorb and learn from the tough questions of yesterday
to help prepare and also Wiles's violations of the rules
(01:11):
during his stay in prison. They're not as serious as
Eric I mean Eric was taking heroin and getting wine
to impact fraud schemes with gang members behind bars. This
is not good. Whereas Wiles's violations are, oh, well, he
hit a phone, hit a cigarette lightery got some Adidas
shoes that were contraband, and oh he blew off an
orientation meeting. Now, this isn't exactly a hanging offense. The
(01:34):
problem is both brothers have been labeled a moderate risk
of violent behavior after release. If they all released, and
when you're labeled moderate as opposed to lower high, you
only get out about twenty percent of the time. Plus
he was the guy who was the older brother who
concocted the scheme. And finally, Lou, the evidence is going
(01:55):
to come out if they repeat the allegations from before
about low While ask a girlfriend to lie and say
that Jose the dad raped and drugged her, he went
to a different girlfriend and asked her to lie and say, oh,
the mom kitty tried to poison the suns. This is
not the kind of thing that should be on your
(02:16):
record if you want to get parole.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Now, these are these are some messed up individuals, and
they were certainly messed up back when they were free
and they seem to have not been rehabilitated.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
How does that work? I mean, is there a formula?
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Is there? Is it one hundred percent on your behavior
while you're in prison or I mean there's been some
talk about well, it's not supposed to be the severity
of the crime. It's it's it's your behavior after you've
been placed in jail.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (02:47):
The formula really involves three things. We call them the
three rs. First of all, rehabilitation is there evidence that
they're improved they did good things? Secondly, remorse Have they
really genuinely knowledge that they did bad things, that lied
about it and they're truly truly sorry. It's easy to
say that, but you know, you try to evaluate it.
And the third hour is risk? Are there risk outside
(03:10):
prison walls? Now, psychiatrists evaluate these guys and then report
to the board and they say, you know, we think
they're a low, moderate, or high risk and allow for example,
they said the guy's a narcissist Eric, They said, you know,
he's very vulnerable. He basically does what other people want
him to do. So all of these factors seed into
the bottom line conclusion. I got to tell you the
commissioners are pretty hardshaw on Eric yesterday, not that he
(03:32):
doesn't deserve it, but I mean, at one point the
commissioner said, well, we're denying parole and he come back
in three years, but if you come back and it's
just a pity party, then that's not going to get
you out, which you know is pretty stern language. Essentially,
Eric did get some good news. I mean, the commissioner
should have could have said come back in five years
or ten or fifteen. Instead they went for the minimum three.
(03:54):
And theoretically, if he keeps his nose claimed for three
years and if he convinces a strength that he really
is a changed man, you know, he might have a
shot while same thing or we don't know what's going
to happen Alile today, if he gets the same treatment
as Eric, he too couldn't give it another shot of
three years.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
What about the point of view, you know, I.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
I find it hard to feel bad for the bad guys, right,
but what about the point of view that, look, these
guys have been institutionalized now for more years than they've
been alive, and the fact that they were able to
get involved in bad things. Eric that he had access
to bad things to get involved in means the system
is imperfect either, and.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
What are these guys going to do.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
They know no other way of life but how to
survive in a prison which isn't necessarily always on the
straight and narrow. So the system itself does owe them
a little bit for allowing those kinds of problems to
be available to them.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
What about that point of view?
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Yeah, that's an interesting point, and it actually kind of
feeds into the idea of the Netflix specials. I mean,
there were hu nd and ten million views of the
Netflix dramatization and also the documentary, and that seemed to
swing public opinion. I mean, Kim Kardashian and other celebrities
have come out in favor of them. You know. The
difficulty is that doesn't really translate into persuading the parole
(05:18):
board members. You know. The other interesting angle, of course,
is where's the governor going to stand on this? Before
we heard that Eric was going to be kept in prison,
a lot of people were saying, well, you know, maybe
the governor will just grant them climency and if they
did get parole from the board, the governor has a
right with a month after the decision is sionalized to
(05:38):
veto it or bless it. I got to tell you, Lou,
I think it's impossible to imagine Newsom letting Eric out
now because if he lets him out, and if, as
the commissioners were worried about, he commits another violent crime,
you know, it's give me some explaining to do by
Gavin Newsom. If you think back in the day when
(05:59):
Dataka's running, that's exactly.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
What I was thinking. I'm like, this is his Ducaccus
moment now, and he doesn't want to have one of.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
Those, because, yeah, Willie Horton was a convicted murderer life
without parole, and the geniuses in the Massachusetts legislature said, well,
we should let guys like this have a furlough overy
a few weekends, you know, or a time or two
a year, you know, reconnect with the old gang. And
of course Willie Horton got out and he raped a
woman in assaulted a person and that was it for
(06:25):
Ducoccus's campaign, along with the picture of him in a
tank with a snoopy helmet on. So Yeahkevin Nissen doesn't
want to go through that. So that ship has sailed.
He's not going to let him out at all. But
here's the deal. They still have a chance to get
out with a new trial because they say there's new evidence.
And there is in the sense that at the trial
when they were convicted of murders, the evidence of Eric
(06:46):
writing a letter to his cousin nine months before the
murders saying, hey, dad's molesting me was not in the
record for whatever reason. And it's possible in the next
few months an LA judge will say, you know what,
if the original jury had known about Eric Sladder, they
might have found him not guilty. Therefore, under the law,
he is entitled to a new trial. It's kind of
(07:08):
a long shot, but Mark Garrigos, I think at this
point it's going to put all of his eggs in
that basket, and you know, we could have a total rerun.
Another Menendez trial for the third time.
Speaker 3 (07:18):
Another Menendez trial in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
ABC News legal analyst Royal Oaks, thanks so much for
coming on.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Always good to catch up with you on this one.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
The mystery that will never go away and that it
has gotten even more complicated with.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
I mean, these claims of having all kinds.
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Of contraband in prison and getting involved in schemes always
so amazing to me how industrious these people are behind bars.
Lou Penrose in for John Coblt on KFI AM six
forty Live Everywhere on the iHeartRadio Act.
Speaker 5 (07:50):
You're listening to John Coblt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Lou Penrose in for John Coblt on the John Cobalt Show,
Happy to be with you. The President took aim at
the mayor of Los Angeles from the press conference this
morning at the White House, both the Mayor of Los Angeles,
Karen Bass, and the governor of California.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
You have a newsom here's President Trump.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
Well, Los Angeles is an example.
Speaker 4 (08:18):
You know, it's poorly run.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
We have a mayor that can't even get permise to
the people that lost that houses.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
The mayor is incompetent. The governor is incompetent.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
Gavin.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
I know Gavin very well. He's an incompetent guy with
a good lad of Vosh and he doesn't.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Get the job.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
JT.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
So a little fun there, President Trump using the BS word.
I had to bleep it out. You know what's interesting
is I don't have to bleep it out because he's
the President of the United States, but we bleep it
out anyway. But yeah, look, the President being very clear
about his thoughts on these two individuals. I think that
(08:57):
competence is going to become a bigger and bigger problem
for major Democrat leaders, because whether you agree or disagree
with the direction the president is taking an agency, a policy,
(09:18):
a position.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
He gets the.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Football into the end zone, he gets the job done.
He took over Washington, DC. You can say, oh, my goodness,
wells so agreedious. It's authoritarian, boy, what a dictator. Well,
legally he can do it, and he did it. He
didn't do as much.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
As he could legally do.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
He could take over the entire federal city. He took
over the police department, and crime rates have dropped. That's competence.
You may not like the National Guard in Georgetown, but
the National Guard in Georgetown somehow is stopping crime in
ward eight And that's effectiveness. And I've had this theory
(09:58):
for a while that Democrats in California they have problems
that they don't have political problems, although I don't I'm
a Republican. I don't agree with their political philosophies, but
I respect them. And back in the day, the only
difference between Democrats and Republicans was the route to solving
(10:23):
the problem.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Right, you want a better society.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Democrats have points of view philosophically that gets us there.
Republicans have different ones, but the goal was always the same,
a better society, right, more opportunity for people, whatever. And
Trump's philosophies are very different than Karen Bass or Gavin Newsom.
(10:46):
But Trump is achieving his goal, and I would argue
Newsom is not, and certainly Karen Vass is not. Nobody
thinks that she is competent. She cares a lot, ye,
and she's strong, but she's not getting the job done.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
Look at the Palisades. I mean she's not getting.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
The job done, and throwing bombs at President Trump all
day doesn't.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
Move her forward.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Nearly as much as she believes it does. So I
do think that Democrats have a competence problem. Show me
where a Democrat in a major city in America is
running the city well. Chicago, New York, Baltimore, DC, Birmingham,
(11:39):
Los Angeles, San Francisco, even San Diego.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Show me where it's.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Being run well, where people are flocking to those places
because the quality of life there is so good. Because
it's so safe, because it's such a great place to
raise a family. Right, people leave those places because they
want a safer quality of light, they want a better
quality of life, they want more opportunity, they want to
(12:05):
raise a family. So Trump is in a position to
reverse that trend because he's showing competence. So the Democrats,
particularly in California, truly have a competency problem. They have
another problem too. This is a kind of a theory
I've been working on. Democrats don't have a political problem
in California. They have a maturity problem in California. There
(12:30):
is a tremendous and this is new, this is novel.
They have a tremendous level of immaturity about them in
everything they do and everything they say. This latest effort
by Democrats and Sacramento, led by Governor Gaven Neussom to
gerrymannder congressional districts to get even with Texas is juvenile,
(12:55):
but it fits because they are very immature. I was
watching the reports out of the US Attorney's office. Billy A. Sale,
the the guy that was charged and ultimately they got him.
(13:17):
He was nailing nails or spikes into the tires of
the ice vehicles in the parking lot of the hotel
out in Rancho Cucamonga, you know, to flatten the tires
of the ice vehicles.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
When they got him, he was fifty four years old.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Fifty four, that's a pretty immature thing for a fifty
four year old to be doing. Like, what's wrong with you?
You're gonna be on camera. There's cameras that, you know,
scan the parking lot of a hotel, especially if they
are ice vehicles parked in it, And even if you're
(13:56):
not on camera, they'll just they'll get a new vehicle.
It's not gonna stop the ice raids. It's a very
immature act. And the other guy, the guy that was
they got him, he was the one on camera caught
throwing the rocks at the windshield of the ice vehicles.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
He was thirty nine years old. Thirty nine.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
In the middle of the day, throwing rocks at the
windshield of a vehicle driven by federal agents who were
doing their job in some kind of half assed form
of political protest. I thought, these are very immature people.
I mean, they're idiots anyway, but they're also immature. Like
(14:40):
at thirty nine, I had already had two of my
three sons, with the third on the way, and I
own my house like I was a grown up at
thirty nine. I was a grown up at twenty one.
But you see some very immature behavior. I see it
in all these demonstrations.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
Nothing wrong with them.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
First Amendment right, right to protests, freely assemble.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Good for you. It's a little strange that you have
as much time that you have.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
But nevertheless, every time I see these Democrats protesting President Trump,
whether it's immigration enforcement or whatever it is, I see
it now in DC. They don't like there's like liberal
white people in DC mad at the cops for making DC.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
State very bizarre to me, but they're out there with.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Signs and like stupid statements on signs, like in the
middle of the day, and I'm thinking, don't you people
have jobs? So there's this immaturity among the Democrat base
and it finds itself really kind of it flows upward
into the lawmakers. You see Democrat lawmakers saying very foolish things,
(15:53):
making foolish statements about the end of democracy. And now
we're faced with this ballot proposition, We're gonna hear a
whole lot about prop fifty. My goodness, this Prop fifty
is going to be the biggest thing ever in California politics,
this special election coming up in November. And all's fair
in love and war, and we are at a political war.
(16:15):
I have said for a long time, this is what
a cold civil war looks like. There's we had, We've
had war, and we had a cold war. We've had
a civil war. We are now in the midst I believe,
of a cold civil war. And this redistrict thing for
the purpose of political games, ratchets, ratcheted. It's ratcheted up
(16:38):
a little bit, and it's legal to do and the
Governor's going to do it and we'll see where the
chips fall. But it is certainly a very immature reaction.
Fight fire with fire is immaturity, like children say that.
And now my governor, we'll talk about it more.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Coming up next.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Lou Penrose on KFI AM six forty Live everywhere on
the iHeartRadio app in for John Coblt.
Speaker 5 (17:07):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Lou Penrose in for John Coblt today, Happy Friday.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
Good to have you along with us.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
So the ballot measure that will be presented to all
of us in California. Proposition fifty has already raised thirteen
million dollars. A Los Angeles Times pull out yesterday, forty
six percent will support the gerrymandering of these congressional districts.
Thirty six percent will not, with eighteen percent undecided, So
(17:44):
there's already a pretty good spread.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
But eighteen percent.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Undecided are going to have to fall somewhere, and it's
going to be an interesting question.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Now again, we'll talk.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Following the news at three with the California Assembly Member
Tom Lackey out Indale. We'll get the latest on this
and I'll bring you up the speed from my experience
with it too. I went through two redistrict things. I
worked for three members of Congress, and they changed the
(18:15):
congressional lines every ten years because the census comes out
every ten years, and I'll fill you in on that process.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
So what they're doing here is they are just changing
the rules of the game.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
Frankly, now, originally the California Governor, Gaven Newsom wanted to
change the rules in the game in reaction to Texas.
They are changing the rules of the game quite Frankly
as well. But as it turned out, the Texas reference
was stripped out of the final piece of legislation that
was passed by the Assembly and the state Senate and
(18:51):
signed into law yesterday by Governor Gaven Newsom. So it's
it's all out war and it's completely legal. I know
they have been some attempts to say, well, this is
supposed to be a thirty day review period and this
and that, But at the end of the day, Democrats
are in control in Sacramento.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
They have a supermajority.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
They're able that they can gut an amend and get
around the thirty day rule, and they did it, and
now it's happening. They are spending unbelievable amounts of money
to get even with President Trump and see if they
can't make it so he's not in power after twenty
twenty six. So where are we the upcoming midterm elections.
(19:33):
We are four hundred and thirty eight days until the
November mid term election, So that's a goodly amount of
time for both sides to make the case whether there
ought to be gerrymandering on purpose for the purpose of
making sure more Democrats are elected, for the purpose of
giving the House of Representatives to the Democrats so they
can I don't know, stop Trump or impeach him or
(19:55):
whatever they want to do once they're in power. But
that's the goal here, and it is frankly refreshing to
see it so transparent. I'm glad they're not even like
Democrats are not even trying to mislead the people of California.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
They're being very honest.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
We are cheating because we think that Texas is cheating,
and so because Texas is cheating, we're gonna cheat to
and try and rig the lines so that there's a
better chance of Democrats getting elected. And they do that
by finding pockets of registered Democrats and making the lines
(20:32):
all squiggily wiggly to go go around that city and
under that city to go get that city because that
city has more registered Democrats.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
And the theory is if there are more registered Democrats in.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
That congressional district, there'll be more Democrat votes and a
Democrat will be get elected.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
And the plan is to get up to five more Democrats.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
And it's completely unfair, it's completely unethical, but it is
certainly legal and majority gets to rule. So we'll see
what the fault. Now, I think going forward, this is
a really bad idea. I think Democrats in California will
regret going here because it's blatantly political, and they're gonna say, yeah,
(21:20):
but lou democracy is in peril.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
The president is about to take over martial law of
the cities. He's taking over DC. He wants to go
over Chicago, he wants they go over Los Angeles. So
this is what dictators do, So we have to use
any means necessary to stop him. That's the route they're
gonna take. We'll see where that gets them. I actually
think they are unaware of how popular Trump is in California.
(21:48):
In twenty sixteen, Trump was not popular in California at
all over those four years, and then over the Biden administration,
Trump became far more popular in California. Now he still
loses the state, but he did way better in twenty
(22:08):
twenty four in California than he did in twenty twenty,
and in twenty twenty he did way better than he
did in twenty sixteen. Now I know that the home
of Trump arrangement syndrome is California. So the people that
don't like Trump really hate him. In California. They just
don't prefer him in Arizona. They don't prefer him in Massachusetts,
(22:34):
but in California it's vitriolic.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
And that's okay, right.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Leaders tend to engender that kind of passion. But there's
also people that were not sure, and after he was
elected in twenty sixteen, realized that all the hyperbole about
this man is going to be a dictator, this man
is going to be a dictator, and they're like, it
wasn't so bad. And then in twenty twenty four, this
(23:04):
man's going to be a dictator. This man's going to
be a dictator.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Look at j six blah blah blah, and problems.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Are getting solved, and the economy is strong, and there
is an inflation and all the tariff deals worked to
bring other nations to the table to negotiate a fair rate,
and the you know, problems are getting solved in the
Middle East and things are moving forward.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
And now they're planting grass in DC. So like the
hyperbole that.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
He was going to be a dictator on day one,
that fizzled out, and that makes people take a second look.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
So I think they're going to have more of an
uphill climb. Now, it all depends on a couple of things.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Democrats love to mislead with dishonest ballot titles, and they'll
come up with some miss you know, misleading dishonest bat
ballot title this time for sure, and we'll see what
we're left with. But so would this measure fail, It will
be a huge embarrassment for Gavin Newsom and a huge
(24:05):
stain on the political careers of these Democrats who voted
to effectively jerry manner the state up to cheat. We'll
talk about it coming up following the news with California
State assembly Member Tom Lackey.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
That's just about fifteen minutes. Lou Penrose in.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
For John Cobelt on the John Cobalt Show on k
i AM six forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 5 (24:30):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Louke Penrose info John Cobelt on the John Cobelt Show.
Coming up following the news at three, we'll talk with
California State assembly Member Tom Lackey about this redistricting effort.
It's called Proposition fifty. It will be on the ballot
November fourth and the likelihood of.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
It being defeated.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
I am frankly surprised, really, am Supper. I thought there
would be more Democrat defection. This is red hot because
Democrats now are actively admitting that they want to cheat
to offset what they're doing in Texas for the sole
(25:18):
purposes of getting Democrats elected, not having fair elections, having
unfair congressional districts to make the chances of a Democrat
getting elected.
Speaker 3 (25:29):
In that congressional district more likely to win the House
of Representatives. It's a bold move.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
As I said, war, all's fair in love and war,
and this is.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
Cold civil war. This is what cold civil war looks like.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
When governors just forget about the rules of the game
and decide to rig the system to benefit their political party.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
That's exactly what's going on here. Now.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
You can say, well, look, Texas is doing it, why
can't we do it? You can, we are, but conditions
are a.
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Little different in Texas.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
To be perfectly fair, they haven't come out to say
we want to get more Republicans. In California. They're saying
we want to get more Democrats. But it did start
with Texas, and Texas could have waited. Texas has a
little bit more credibility than California has. The arguments in Texas,
(26:30):
and I'm not I'm not a big.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Fan of this way of winning.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
I am partisan for sure, But at the end of
the day, you ought to be able to win an
election based on your ideas, and as a Republican, I
believe our ideas are better. So a good candidate with
some good personality ought to be able to take a
standard Republican playbook and sell it to the voter. And
(26:59):
if you can't sell it to the voter and you
don't win, then you're the candidates the problem, not the philosophy,
because I know smaller government, lower taxes, law and order
always wins.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
Smaller government, lower taxes.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
More freedom, and law and order is always better than
the alternative. And the other side is selling the alternative.
So you ought to be able to sell it. You
should not have to draw different lines. And that's what
they're choosing to do in Texas. Now in Texas, theyre
not saying that's the reason why. In Texas, they're saying,
look a couple things, you know, since two thousand, things
(27:36):
have changed in Texas significantly. A whole lot of people
from California moved here, a whole lot of people from
New York moved here, a whole lot of illegals.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Just got removed.
Speaker 2 (27:47):
And there are congressional districts where President Trump won in
Texas and the Democrat that's representing that congressional district wants
to impeach him, So that's kind of out of balance. Now,
it is possible that the same voter could vote for
President Trump and vote for a Democrat congresswoman that wants
(28:08):
to impte impeach President Trump.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
But that does seem odd.
Speaker 2 (28:12):
So the Texas State Legislature, who is empowered with drawing
those lines, chose to review it.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
And that's their rationale. Is you know, is that just
you know, political spin? Maybe I don't know. I don't
care what goes out in.
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Texas, but what's going on in California is absolutely clear.
They want to elect more Democrats. They want to jerry
mander the lines so to increase the odds of a
Democrat getting elected by increasing the amount of Democrat voters
in the congressional district.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
And the maps look terrible.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
I mean, they are certainly not good for self representation
the way it's supposed to work is just supposed to
keep community together of interest. It's supposed to be county,
whole city hall where it's possible, right, keep cities all
in one congressional district, keep counties all in one congressional district,
keep communities of interest together. Agriculture communities are different than
(29:14):
major cities. Major cities are different than suburbs. And this
is all designed so that you are well represented to
the federal government for federal needs. So where there's a
lot of I don't know, retired military that ought to
be a VA hospital there, so that would make sense
(29:35):
to group that together. And it's never perfect, but you
can approach perfection if you take politics out of it.
And that's what the Citizens Commission was designed to do.
Because it's it's the nature of the beast right, it
makes all this. It's human nature as human nature. If
you are a Republican, you want a congressional district that's
(29:56):
got more Republicans registered than Democrats registered. That makes your
job easier to run for re election. If you're a Democrat,
you want to run in a district that's got a
higher Democrat registration than Republican registration, because that makes your
job easier. But at the end of the day, the
amount of registered Republicans or Democrats should not matter in
the congressional district when it's being drawn, it should be what.
Speaker 3 (30:19):
Are the people, regardless of their political affiliation?
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Are they? You know, farmers, are they city people? Are
they serbinites? I mean, what's going on? And then what
part of the state is it? Northern California should probably
stay in Northern California, it shouldn't be most of Reading
and then a small squiggly line that dips down into
San Francisco to just increase the Democrat registration of that
weird shape district to ensure a Democrat wins.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Like, that's not the way it's supposed to be.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
So with respect to the whole Texas versus California fight,
I don't think it's fair. I think that Texas has
a whole other agenda going on, and the California one
is completely Trump arrangement syndrome.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
That's if they win.
Speaker 2 (31:07):
I still maintain that this is going to be a
hard sell because of Trump's performance in.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
California in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
I think that there's a lot of manifestations of Trump's
arrangement syndrome.
Speaker 3 (31:22):
Denial is a big one.
Speaker 2 (31:23):
Democrats in California hate Trump so much that they will
not accept the reality that Trump outperformed his twenty twenty numbers.
They will not accept the reality that he's popular. They
will not accept the reality that he won the popular vote.
They will not accept the reality that he won not
a few, all seven battleground states. The political reality, and
(31:48):
I have a policide agree.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
I'm a political scientist.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
The political reality from a dispassionate point of view is
the story wasn't Trump beat Harris.
Speaker 3 (32:00):
The story was it wasn't even close.
Speaker 2 (32:05):
And if you're a Democrat with Trump arrangement syndrome listening
right now, that angers you, like you cannot put that
anywhere in your brain. There's no place for you to
accept that reality. So you have to push back. Some
people are actually saying.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
The election was rigged, you know, the election was rigged.
That actually Kamala Harris won.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
Like that that is easier, that's more palatable for a
Democrat in California with Trump arrangement syndrome than to recognize
that not only did he slaughter her politically in the election,
but he.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Flipped seven counties in California.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Imperial County, California was Democrat forever.
Speaker 3 (32:55):
It's like eighty five percent Latinos.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
Democrats tell you that Trump and Latinos don't get along.
The Latinos hate Trump in California, and for the first
time in like dozens of years, Imperial County, California went
for Trump. How can that possibly be? Doesn't fit any
of the narrative that they're out there reporting. So there's
(33:20):
a couple of I think X factors that Democrats are
not willing to accept that I have factored in into
this question coming up in November, that I think is
going to be troublesome for them.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
We will see, now, I said.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
Early polling Los Angeles Times pulling out this morning, had
the notion of the proposition favored by forty six percent,
the thirty six percent, but still eighteen percent undecided. So
there are enough people who don't know about it or
(33:56):
don't care to know about it, that ultimately we'll be
voting on it, and we have a goodly amount of
time to form a narrative, and what that narrative will
be remains to be seen. Because I also contend that
this is so inside baseball that most people are going
to vote, know, because they don't know and they don't care.
You get into redistricting and apportionment and all that other stuff,
(34:18):
and people like, give me a break, right, this isn't
a political year, So we'll talk about it coming up
following the News at three o'clock with California assembly Member
Tom Lockey. Lou Penrose in for John Cobelt on The
John Cobelt Show on KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
Hey, you've been listening to the John Cobelt 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
Host
John Kobylt
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