June 4, 2025 • 35 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 1 (06/04) - US Congressman Tom McClintock comes on the show to talk about Pres. Trump announcing he is cutting off federal funding for CA’s high-speed rail project. More on Pres. Trump announcing he is cutting off federal funding for CA’s high-speed rail project. CA State Senator Tony Strickland comes on the show to talk about Pres. Trump announcing he is cutting off federal funding for CA’s high-speed rail project. Reacting to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy calling high-speed rail a "boondoggle".
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can't I am six forty. You're listening to the John
Cobelt podcast on the iHeartRadio app. We are on every
day from one to four o'clock and then after four
o'clock John Cobelt Show on demand the podcast on the
iHeart app. And this is a big news breaking in
just the last hour or two, the Trump administration is
(00:21):
cutting off funding to high speed rail. Four billion dollars
in future funding has been withdrawn, shut down, pulled back.
The state's going to have about thirty days to make
the case that it complied with the terms of the
four billion dollar grant. The Department of Transportation issued a
(00:46):
actually through their federal Railroad administration that they oversee, has
said that there's no viable path. That's that's the big
phrase and oval headlines. No viable path forward to complet
eight high speed rail. They have massive cost overruns, miss deadlines,
(01:06):
projected ridership that is total nonsense, no actual track on
the ground. And this is after seventeen years, over seventeen
billion dollars. Let's go to Tom McClintock, Northern California Congressman,
Republican who's been with us on with us frequently. Tom
(01:28):
I know we're going to go through the formality of
having the news of administration respond to this, but it
looks like as far as the federal government funding, this
is dead. This is dead for the rest of Trump's term.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Well, we knew it was the worst boondoggle in history
twenty five years ago when we argued it in the
state legislature, and it hasn't gotten any better. Their passenger
estimates have always been grossly inflated. They began predicting eight
times the passengers that were presently flying between all the
airports and Southern California. In San Francisco, eight times the
(02:02):
number of airline passengers were going to jump on this
train to make the same trip, even though it would
take two more hours to get there and the cost
per trip would be about the same as air service. So,
I mean, those are the ridiculous of premises that they
set twenty five years ago when they launched this monstrosity.
(02:22):
I calculated at the time that for the cost that
they were projecting of about twenty billion dollars back then,
we could have added one thousand, seven hundred and thirty
miles of new freeway lanes at century freeway prices. That
would have carried ten times the passenger miles. Now I
just updated those figures. Looking at the new numbers today,
(02:42):
they're now projecting one hundred and thirty billion dollars to
complete the system. At current construction prices, we could add
two thousand miles of new freeway lanes in the most
densely congested urban areas of the state, or forty thousand
miles of new freeway lanes in rural areas such as
Central Valley. But let's just stick to the two thousand
(03:04):
miles of new freeway lanes at the most expensive construction
prices that we experience. That's the most densely congested areas
of the state.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
For what they've.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Already spent, we could have added more than two hundred
miles of new freeway lanes on routes like the one
oh one and the four oh five and the I
five through Los Angeles. That's that's what these morons have
cost us, and it is heartbreaking to realize the impact
two hundred miles of new freeway lanes on the one
(03:36):
oh one, the four oh five, and the I five.
Would that have had a greater positive impact on your
life than the monument to stupidity that's sitting out in
the middle of the Central Valley right now, completely unused
and never will be completed.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
My opinion, this smells like a criminal operation, like a
criminal con job of the state taxpayers and American taxpayers.
How could there not be criminality involved here when you
make seventeen billion dollars disappear and you don't have a
damn thing to show for it, nothing, no product.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Let me go back twenty five years ago to our
original debates on this issue. It was being spearheaded by
a con artist by the name of Meddi Morshit. I
used to call him Professor Harold Hill.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
You remember the.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Music man, the con man, and that what he just
reminded me of, Professor Harold Hill always gonna be the
most wonderful thing in the world. And we started we
started looking at the numbers, like, you know, how much
in freeway expansion could we get for the same amount,
or for that matter, what does a single train trip
take in terms of electricity? He had no idea what
I posed that question to him in the committee hearing
(04:44):
one day. The answer, by the way, sixteen thousand kilowatt
hours for each single train trip at the time, that
would have meant burning two tons of coal to generate
the electricity in the current power mix on the grid,
and yet they were selling this as clean energy. Now,
we can't guarantee enough electricity to keep your refrigerator running
in the summer. So you tell me where we're going
(05:06):
to get that sixteen thousand kilowatt hours of electricity to
run each train trip on that system once it's built
for the price of two thousand miles of new freeway length.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
The supporters know all this though, right if you know it,
they know it.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Oh, we made it very clear at the time.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
So what's the benefit here? Who got the money? Who
benefited from this colossal twenty five year scam.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
I imagine a lot of contractors, and by the way,
these were not productive job you know.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
They say, well, at.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Least we're creating thousands of jobs, paying people to build
this huge elevated section in the central Valley. And my
response is, well, you could create thousands of jobs. Paying
people to dig holes in the desert. Doesn't mean you're
getting anything of value for your labor, and the cost
of the labors taken from other workers who were paying
(06:03):
taxes for it.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
So you don't.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
There's no product seventeen years, there's no visible product. Yeah,
I met people want to be going to prison for this.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Well, a lot of it was political malpracticed by the
people who voted for this in the state legislature years ago.
And all the people that sold the bonds. No, don't
forget Californians fell for this. They approved a major bond measure.
And as I said, they've spent about fourteen billion dollars
so far on this project. That's two hundred miles of
(06:37):
new freeway lane.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Yeah, well they sold it. They sold it as it
was going to be done by twenty twenty only thirty
three billion, and the trains would go over about two
hundred and twenty miles an hour, and you go to
San Francisco in two and a half hours. That's what
the cell was. And people got caught up like all
the glamour and glitz of a high speed, shiny train nothing,
(07:01):
we got zero out of it.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Well, maybe we're sadder but wiser now and we'll go
back to building a freeway system that twenty five years
ago was the envy of the nation.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
All right, Tom McClintock, thank you for coming.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
On again my pleasure, John, thanks for having.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Me, Republican Congressman from northern California. This is I mean,
this is good news today. At least federal tax money
is not going to be poured in anymore, although like
I said, that's going to take thirty seven days after
the response from the criminals at high speed Rail. And
I don't mean that, I mean that literally, these guys
(07:40):
are criminals. I don't know who can charge them who,
I don't know if anybody's investigating them. But this is
absurd that they were able to blow seventeen billion dollars
without a product. No way this would go on in
the private sector. That's impossible. And this just shows you
how freaking stupid much of the public. I mean, this
(08:01):
is not a surprise. It's been in front of our eyes.
Well actually yeah, it's been in front of our eyes.
That nothing is in front of our eyes, that there
are no trains, there are no tracks, there is nothing built. Unbelievable.
When we come back, well, we'll get into the details
here of what this report was from the Federal Railroad Administration,
(08:24):
the Department of Transportation. Sean Duffy. We've ended up with
a big zero here but at least finally, Trump is
cutting off funding for high speed rail.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
John Cobelt Show. We're on from one to four every day.
Moistline is Fridays in the three o'clock hour twice. Moistline
is where you vent your anger and frustration and you
should be calling about this. Eight seven seven moist steady
six eight seven seven moist eighty six. Federal funding for
high speed rail has been cut off by the Trump administration.
(09:01):
That's about four billion dollars on the table. It's no
longer on the table. And this is a great day now.
That does not stop the jackals in Sacramento. These guys
are criminals, con artists, and thieves and to prove it
to you, a spokeshole for this criminal California High Speed
(09:23):
Rail Authority provided this statement after the Trump administration announced
the cutoff. The governor's budget proposal, which is currently before
the legislature, extends another at least a billion dollars per
year in funding for the next twenty years twenty years,
(09:49):
providing the necessary resources to complete the project's initial operating segment.
So that's what's sitting in the new budget bill twenty
billion dollars a billion for the next twenty years at least.
So this is what these criminals in Sacramento in the
Assembly state Saidate Gavin Newsom high speed rail. They want
(10:12):
to take twenty billion dollars more of your tax money
and blow it on whoever is on the other end
of these contracts. They're trade unions, but I think normally
when you're in a construction union, you construct things, you
build things. There's nothing useful built nothing, no rail, no train,
(10:38):
no train stations, nothing. So those unions are stealing the money.
And then you have lawires, environmental consultants, business consultants, all
kinds of land use consultants. They all stole the money.
There was several audits. One of the audits said, there's
(11:00):
no invoices. We don't know who received these billions of dollars.
There are no records are there's literally no records, no paperwork,
no computer files, nothing, no paperwork, no computer files, no
train stations, no trains, no train track. It was as
(11:21):
if the money was set on fire. And Gavin Newsom
and the Assembly in the Senate is promising a billion
a year for the next twenty years. It'll be twenty
forty five and they'll still be spending tax money on
high speed Rail. Department of Transportation. In their press release
(11:44):
where they announced that they're cutting off the funding, they
wrote this helpful little history lesson. In two thousand and eight,
the California High Speed Rail system was represented as a
two phase visionary system connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco,
(12:05):
later on north to Sacramento and south to San Diego.
Since then, the project footprint has been dramatically reduced from
an eight hundred miles segment to one hundred and seventy
one miles to the current vision one hundred and nineteen miles,
(12:25):
commonly known as Bakersfield to Mercett, although I'm told actually
the one train station's in Wasco and the other is
in Madera, so they're actually spent seventeen billions so far
on a dream of connecting Waco with Madera. Despite substantial
(12:47):
federal funding and support, California High Speed Rail does not
have the capacity to deliver the full system. It has
not learned from its mistakes and mismanagement, has failed to
he had an organization capable of effectively and efficiently managing
project delivery. There's still numerous delays and cost overruns. At
(13:08):
this rate, California High Speed Rail Authority will never complete
the California High Speed Rail system. California High Speed Rail
Authority has not acted in good faith in making representations
to the Federal Railroad Administration. That's a really polite way
of saying they constantly lie. I mean, if you heard
(13:29):
Tom McClintock in the last segment, they constantly invented fantastical
ridership estimates that in no way would ever happen if
we lived one hundred million years. You cannot beat a
(13:50):
ninety nine dollars flight, a sixty nine dollars flight from
Los Angeles to San Francisco where it gets you there
in a little over an hour. You cannot beat that,
not with a train, none of it's high speed. That
was a total lie. They'll never get the ridership. And
(14:15):
they weren't supposed to use a dime of tax money.
That's another thing. I thought that was an ironclad rule,
no tax money. Well now newsom twenty billion dollars in
tax money over the next twenty years minimum. It's just
they do it in your face. They do it proudly
(14:38):
while they occasionally there's this little blip of indignation you
see at a hearing, but it's phony. They're acting. They
have to play to the camera, to the poor schlub
at home who's getting pissed. But do you believe they're spending
all this money on high speed rail? So you gotta
go on t and go yeah, yeah, you know, we
(15:01):
got to do an investigation here. This is getting out
of hand. I'm telling you, here's how the corruption work works.
You give the tax money, the high speed rail money,
to these trade unions, these labor unions. They in turn
give politicians generous campaign contributions. Same thing with these architects,
(15:23):
these land use experts, these lawyers, the environmental experts. They
all give money. It's a kickback scheme. It's a money
laundering scheme. The whole Democratic and the Democratic Assembly and
State Senate and the NEWSOB administration is part of this
massive money laundering scheme and they have collectively profited it
(15:48):
to seventeen billion dollars. The unions, the lawyers, the architects,
the engineers, and then they give a cut back to
the Assembly and State senators who voted for this monster.
They all knew it would never be built. They don't
care that it's going to ever, that it's not going
(16:09):
to be built. Part of the stick, part of the act,
it is to give these pompous, sanctimonious speeches about California
is going to take America into the future. We're going
to be on the cutting edge of high speed rail.
We're going to do wondrous things to save the planet
(16:33):
from the greenhouse gas. It's all scripted nonsense to manipulate
your emotions, all of it, and people fall for it
over and over and over again. It's fascinating to see
how dense much of human nature is. They do everything
(16:54):
but come into your bedroom at night, pull your pants down,
pull your wallet out, and set fire to your money
right in front of you and your family. And you'll
still vote for these guys, the same guys. You'll vote
for the same guys who come over your house and
set your money on fire. Unbelievable. Tony Strickland has a
(17:16):
lot to say on this. He's up next. He's the
state Senator from Huntington Beach, Republican, and he's he was
just on what was it yesterday or was it yesterday
because see this, this is what they're really about. The
State Senate wants to spend seven hundred thousand dollars on
(17:38):
a new study to see what the economic impact of
high speed rail would be between Waco and Madera. Really
seven hundred thousand dollars, Will you know? The people who
get this study contract are are are going to are
are going to funnel some of his back to the
(18:00):
politicians who approved the deal. Again, money laundering scam. They're criminals.
Why don't you treat them as criminals.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
You're listening to John Cobel's on Demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Welcome. We're on every day from one until four and
then if you miss anything, and today don't miss anything.
We're on after four o'clock on the podcast John Cobelt's
Show on Demand, and that's where you catch up. As
we've been telling you, bombshell from the Trump administration. The
Department of Transportation notified the high speed rail thieves that
(18:40):
they are cutting off funding. Four billion dollars in federal
funding is gone, and they have issued a three hundred
and ten page report, a long long list of problems
with the project. A lot of missed deadlines, a lot
of budget overruns, a lot of just flat out lies
about project to ridership. And as far as the federal
(19:02):
government is concerned, the gravy train has just been derailed.
They're not getting any more money as long as Trump
is in office. We're going to talk now a California
State Senator Tony Strickland. He's the Republican represents the Huntington
Beach area. Tony, how are you.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
I'm fantastic, John, How are you all right?
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Here's the thing that's been bothering me that we've been
talking about the response from high speed Rail is that
Newsom's current budget says the state will spend a billion
dollars a year every year for the next twenty years.
Is this true? Is this going to happen?
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Well, that's what he has said. I mean, he's put
the high speed rail on life support. But the support
for this project is doing every single day. And I'm
encouraging your listeners to call your local legislators and tell
him to tell them to pull the plug on this project.
I mean, this project is the worst public the public
(20:04):
proposal in the history of our nation. We're spending billions
of billions of dollars, by the way, billions of dollars
we don't have. And I've often said California doesn't have
a revenue problem, has a wasteful spending problem. We're wasting
hard earned dollars. They come to Sacramento, we're not funding
things that Prop thirty six to keep people safe. But
then we're putting billions of dollars in a train that
(20:26):
everybody knows will never be built as proposed.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Is anybody embarrassed by this in Sacramento? Anybody at all.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Know how they're not? Honestly, I don't know how they're not.
And I think we need to hold these elected officials
accountable that keep you. Just the other day, as you know,
they spent seven hundred thousand dollars to do a study
on the train to go on from her Said to
Bakersfield again as proposed. Everybody knows is train's never going
to be built, and now they want to take it
(20:55):
and do the money just from Californias, and it's money
that we just don't have.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
There's nothing to study, there's no train, it's all empty land.
What are they going to study exactly exactly?
Speaker 3 (21:07):
And my guess is if they've originally proposed a train
from merced to Bakersfield. The voters at California would have
never gone forward with this project, and not alone. The
billions have already spent, They've already spent more than was proposed,
and they were supposed to be done in twenty twenty.
They're nowhere near close to being done. In fact, they
haven't even laid down tracks yet.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
That's what's ridiculous. The best they can offer is Bakersfield
to Mercede. I mean that's where they top out.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
No, nobody's even discussing San Francisco to LA and they know.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
That's not going to happen. And again, that's what was proposed,
and the people of California were lied to.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
So is this payoff to the unions, the construction unions
that finance a lot of campaigns. Is this this basic corruption?
Speaker 3 (21:55):
No? That's their argument is, oh, you know we're putting
people to work. No, you know we're wasting billions of dollars.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Well, yes, they're allegedly putting people to work. There's just
no outcome here. There's no product.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
It's no work. Yeah, there's no product being done, and
no one could ever do that in the private sector.
Could you imagine getting private investment and saying, oh, it's
going to be done in twenty twenty for three to
three billion, and then turning around and say, we've already
spent what you originally proposed. Right now, it's the thirty
three billion, it's one hundred and twenty eight billion.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
And they've already blown at least seventeen billion. It's well
over one hundred billion over budget. There's only a small
fragment that they think they can build at sometime I
don't know, in twenty years. I mean, the whole thing
is such a colossal boondoggle. It's the worst project in
the history of the world. Here the worst public project.
(22:51):
And nobody's going to go to jail over this. There
isn't some kind of investigation. How could this not be fraud?
How's this not then stealing money?
Speaker 3 (23:00):
There needs to be investigations over this and follow the money,
as old saying, follow the money, but there needs to
be investigation. I'm glad that the federal government and the
Trumpan administration saw and stop wasting federal tax dollars. Now
we need to keep pushing to make sure we stop
wasting state tax dollars.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Do you talk? I always wonder what goes on behind
the scenes the Democrats in the Assembly and in the Senate.
Do they ever whisper quietly off the record? Wow? This
thing is a disaster. This is I could tell.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
When I've been the leading voice against this project, and
I could tell in their eyes that they know they're
not voting for the right thing. I could just tell
why their mannerism is. But they don't tell me that privately.
But I've been the leading voice against this, and I
was a leading voice against it one of those first
proposed twelve years ago.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
And what can people do? Yeah, I know you said
they should call up their assemblymen and states senator, but
they're just seems. I wish them some kind of mechanism
to get us out of this, because if the whole
legislature is corrupt and this is just stealing as much
money as they can for as long as they can
and stay ahead of you know, the Feds, the investigators,
(24:15):
then you know we're just going to keep getting screwed in. Definitely.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
Well, I think I'm hopeful that a few of these
members who keep voting for this lose their reelection campaign.
You want people to wake up here in Sacramento. Have
them started losing some of their members that have been
voting for this nonsense, then then and only then they'll
wake up. And in fact, I do believe whoever the
next governor of California is is going to pull the
(24:40):
plug if it isn't already pulled ahead of time. Michael
is to get this high speed real that we pull
the plug before the next election twenty twenty six. But
if not, I'm confident that whoever the next governor is
is not going to move forward on this project, knowing
how unpopular it is.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Do you think your party is equipped with it's message
and money and the right candidates that they could make
a big stink about this and get some SATs.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
I mean, I didn't come back to the Sacramento just
to be a center. I was already a center. I
didn't need the title. I came back here to hopefully
bring some common sense and make California golden again. Like
it's this is just absurd that we tripled the spending
in the last ten years and we still have a
creminline infrastructure, we still have homelessness is spiraling out of control,
(25:28):
and we have crime on the rise. We've tripled our
spending and that's why I always say, you know, we
don't have a revenue problem. We're just wasting people's money.
And we need to have more oversight. We need to
do more what we can. We need to fund things
like the Prop thirty six that helps keep us safe.
That should be the number one role of government is
public safety. And this governor and this legislature out of
(25:51):
touch with everyday citizens.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
All right, Tony Strickland, good talking with you again.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Always great talking to you, John, Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
And Tony Strickland. He's the States or a Republican out
of Honeyton Beach and he's been very vocal about just
flat out ending this high speed rail disaster. And as
we've been telling you, the Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy today
he oversees the Federal Railroad Administration. They did a review.
(26:19):
The report is over three hundred pages and they have
a long list of sins committed by the High Speed
Rail or the high speed Rail executives, and money's being
cut off. They were due four billion dollars. They already
they already blew seven billion in federal dollars over the
last fifteen years, and again there isn't one inch of
(26:42):
high speed rail track. We'll continue.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI Am
six forty.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
John Cobelt here, and if you're just joining us, we'll
talk more about it later in the show. The high
speed rail pride took a big blow today. The Trump
administration said no more federal money. Four billion dollars on
the table, and Trump and Sean Duffy, the Transportation Secretary,
(27:11):
said no. They released three hundred and ten pages covering
nine categories of incompetence and malfeasance on the part of
high speed rail. Look, I'm going to say this a
thousand times. It's a criminal operation and I'll be treated
as such. And I'm waiting to see who you know. Obviously,
our Attorney General isn't going to do it, but he
should rob Bonte if he wasn't part of this dishonest conspiracy.
(27:36):
I mean, they're stealing money in front of us. Here
is what Sean Duffy had to say, the Transportation Secretary.
He went on Fox News to explain why the money's
getting cut off, cut wood.
Speaker 5 (27:49):
Timelines, and the budget for the California High speed rail
is that they can't meet them right, And so we
have four billion dollars that has been authorized to go
to California to build this project, and we don't want
to invest in Boon Doggles, and so we basically found
that they're not going to be able to complete the project,
which I think all of Californians and all of Americans knew.
(28:09):
But we're going to give them thirty days to respond
to us. If they think we're wrong, we'll hear them out.
But after that, if they don't make a good case,
we're going to take that money back.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
You know, I want to see high speed rail in America, Danna.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
You go to Europe.
Speaker 5 (28:21):
They have high speed rail everywhere and it works. Why
it can't be built in America and why it can't
be built within you know? You know, timeframes that work
for the people that invest in these projects makes no
sense to me. And again, we'll look for good projects
to invest in. This does not appear to be one
of them. Not one high speed track has been laid
(28:41):
and we're sixteen billion dollars in seventeen years into the project.
And again, this has all the marketings of Boon.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Doggle that's Sean Duffy, head of the Transportation Department. Listen
to this little worm, that weirdo Scott Wiener, Democrats from
San Francisco. Last I heard, he was against making buying
teenage kids for sex a felony. He was against that.
(29:09):
He's that guy, Scott Wheenersay it thinks it's okay for
you to buy teenagers or sex. Okay, Well, he's got
an opinion on this. He says. The Trump administration has
been laying the groundwork for a month. Yeah, that's true.
They're completely hostile, not just a California high speed rail
but rail in general. Well, you know something, every public
(29:33):
rail line in this country loses a lot of money.
Amtrak would be bankrupt if it was a private organization.
There is no rail that can support itself because there's
relatively few people who want to take railroad rides across
the country anywhere. There's some, but not enough to make
(29:56):
a profit. So we're pouring a lot of tax money
into a system that's largely rejected by the public. And
it's bad enough. We got the albatross of the old
railroad lines around our next so we got to pay
for that into infinity. But Why would we add high
speed rail when clearly there's no market for it, and
(30:17):
even worse, they can't build it. Wiener, a staunch proponent
of the Bullet Train, according to the San Francisco Chronicle,
acknowledged the project's challenges. Listen to this, Wiener says, quote,
we certainly have to do better in California in terms
of project delivery. You buffoon. It's seventeen years and seventeen
(30:44):
billion dollars and only can say, well, we certainly have
to do better. You know what a con man does.
A con man when you say, hey, you know I
already gave you ten thousand dollars. I want my money back.
I'm not getting a return on my in back. Oh
you know, let's look to the future. Okay, if you
(31:05):
just give me another ten thousand dollars, then I They
always change the subject, look to the future, and then
give you their new pitch to lute you again, which
is what Newsom does. Newsom is a classic shakedown slick
haired con man because he starts battling about California being
a leader in America for high speed rail and waiter
(31:28):
the same thing. It's not a reason to start canceling
major transformative public infrastructure projects. But it's seventeen years and
seventeen billion. If that's not a reason, what is a reason?
How is it transformative? It's a train that goes from
a train that goes from Madera to Wasco. What's that transforming?
(31:54):
He just says nonsense, and nobody challenges on him. That's
what's amazing. Nobody says is Scott, Scott, get your hands
out of your pants. Scott, look at me. What is
a major transformative project high speed rail Wasco to Madera. Seriously,
(32:15):
seventeen billion, seventeen years, and you need you need billions
and billions more. What is wrong with you? He says.
We need to find a way to get these projects
done more efficiently and more effectively. We need to find
a way go back to what Tom McClintock said. They
were pitching the legislature on this idea twenty five years ago.
(32:40):
Twenty five years ago, when Great Davis was governor. They
were pitching them high speed rail. They had consultants and
they had backers and boosters. And now they're saying, well,
maybe we'll make it a public private partnership. Yes, they're
going to get private money. Have been trying to get
(33:01):
private money from day one. It's been twenty five years
of the entire world saying no, no private money. You
hear about high speed rail in China and in Japan
and in Spain. You notice none of the companies that
built those projects ever show up at a news conference
(33:23):
with high speed rail officials. They've all been asked, how
many times can you ask somebody twenty five years? Imagine
asking a girl for twenty five years to go out
on a date. I don't know by time you and
she in your fifties, maybe she's not going out with you.
Nobody wants a piece of this, and the reason was unanimous.
(33:44):
They thought the California political culture was corrupt. Now most
of the people who were part of the corrupt culture
back in the year two thousand when this nonset started, well,
they're now out of office or dead. So we have
a second generation, maybe a third generation of corrupt buffoons
(34:06):
who are looting you. Kevin Kylie introduced a legislation on
January sixth to make the project ineligible for further funding.
He's a Congressman from northern California. Do you know what
Gavin Newsom did On that day, he drove a symbolic
(34:29):
spike into the ground to celebrate the rail line's first
twenty two mile segment from the border of Tallarian Kern
Counties to Poplar Avenue in Wasker. There's no rail there.
It was just a ceremonial spike. That's all Newsom did.
(34:52):
That's what a con man does, has some showy public ceremony,
a gimmick, a stunt, a gag, make you laugh, make
you smile, keep voting for him. We come back. We're
gonna have Alex Stone on from ABC News. That whack
(35:17):
job that firebombed those older Jewish people in Colorado. He
actually wanted to use weapons and have a big mass
murder event, but he couldn't get He couldn't buy the
guns because he's in the country illegally. Alex has that
(35:37):
story coming up next. Debra Mark Live in the KFI
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. You're listening to the John
Cobelt podcast on the iHeartRadio app. We are on every
day from one to four o'clock and then after four
o'clock John Cobelt Show on demand the podcast on the
iHeart app. And this is a big news breaking in
just the last hour or two, the Trump administration is
(00:21):
cutting off funding to high speed rail. Four billion dollars
in future funding has been withdrawn, shut down, pulled back.
The state's going to have about thirty days to make
the case that it complied with the terms of the
four billion dollar grant. The Department of Transportation issued a
(00:46):
actually through their federal Railroad administration that they oversee, has
said that there's no viable path. That's that's the big
phrase and oval headlines. No viable path forward to complet
eight high speed rail. They have massive cost overruns, miss deadlines,
(01:06):
projected ridership that is total nonsense, no actual track on
the ground. And this is after seventeen years, over seventeen
billion dollars. Let's go to Tom McClintock, Northern California Congressman,
Republican who's been with us on with us frequently. Tom
(01:28):
I know we're going to go through the formality of
having the news of administration respond to this, but it
looks like as far as the federal government funding, this
is dead. This is dead for the rest of Trump's term.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Well, we knew it was the worst boondoggle in history
twenty five years ago when we argued it in the
state legislature, and it hasn't gotten any better. Their passenger
estimates have always been grossly inflated. They began predicting eight
times the passengers that were presently flying between all the
airports and Southern California. In San Francisco, eight times the
(02:02):
number of airline passengers were going to jump on this
train to make the same trip, even though it would
take two more hours to get there and the cost
per trip would be about the same as air service. So,
I mean, those are the ridiculous of premises that they
set twenty five years ago when they launched this monstrosity.
(02:22):
I calculated at the time that for the cost that
they were projecting of about twenty billion dollars back then,
we could have added one thousand, seven hundred and thirty
miles of new freeway lanes at century freeway prices. That
would have carried ten times the passenger miles. Now I
just updated those figures. Looking at the new numbers today,
(02:42):
they're now projecting one hundred and thirty billion dollars to
complete the system. At current construction prices, we could add
two thousand miles of new freeway lanes in the most
densely congested urban areas of the state, or forty thousand
miles of new freeway lanes in rural areas such as
Central Valley. But let's just stick to the two thousand
(03:04):
miles of new freeway lanes at the most expensive construction
prices that we experience. That's the most densely congested areas
of the state.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
For what they've.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Already spent, we could have added more than two hundred
miles of new freeway lanes on routes like the one
oh one and the four oh five and the I
five through Los Angeles. That's that's what these morons have
cost us, and it is heartbreaking to realize the impact
two hundred miles of new freeway lanes on the one
(03:36):
oh one, the four oh five, and the I five.
Would that have had a greater positive impact on your
life than the monument to stupidity that's sitting out in
the middle of the Central Valley right now, completely unused
and never will be completed.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
My opinion, this smells like a criminal operation, like a
criminal con job of the state taxpayers and American taxpayers.
How could there not be criminality involved here when you
make seventeen billion dollars disappear and you don't have a
damn thing to show for it, nothing, no product.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Let me go back twenty five years ago to our
original debates on this issue. It was being spearheaded by
a con artist by the name of Meddi Morshit. I
used to call him Professor Harold Hill.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
You remember the.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Music man, the con man, and that what he just
reminded me of, Professor Harold Hill always gonna be the
most wonderful thing in the world. And we started we
started looking at the numbers, like, you know, how much
in freeway expansion could we get for the same amount,
or for that matter, what does a single train trip
take in terms of electricity? He had no idea what
I posed that question to him in the committee hearing
(04:44):
one day. The answer, by the way, sixteen thousand kilowatt
hours for each single train trip at the time, that
would have meant burning two tons of coal to generate
the electricity in the current power mix on the grid,
and yet they were selling this as clean energy. Now,
we can't guarantee enough electricity to keep your refrigerator running
in the summer. So you tell me where we're going
(05:06):
to get that sixteen thousand kilowatt hours of electricity to
run each train trip on that system once it's built
for the price of two thousand miles of new freeway length.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
The supporters know all this though, right if you know it,
they know it.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Oh, we made it very clear at the time.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
So what's the benefit here? Who got the money? Who
benefited from this colossal twenty five year scam.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
I imagine a lot of contractors, and by the way,
these were not productive job you know.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
They say, well, at.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Least we're creating thousands of jobs, paying people to build
this huge elevated section in the central Valley. And my
response is, well, you could create thousands of jobs. Paying
people to dig holes in the desert. Doesn't mean you're
getting anything of value for your labor, and the cost
of the labors taken from other workers who were paying
(06:03):
taxes for it.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
So you don't.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
There's no product seventeen years, there's no visible product. Yeah,
I met people want to be going to prison for this.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Well, a lot of it was political malpracticed by the
people who voted for this in the state legislature years ago.
And all the people that sold the bonds. No, don't
forget Californians fell for this. They approved a major bond measure.
And as I said, they've spent about fourteen billion dollars
so far on this project. That's two hundred miles of
(06:37):
new freeway lane.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Yeah, well they sold it. They sold it as it
was going to be done by twenty twenty only thirty
three billion, and the trains would go over about two
hundred and twenty miles an hour, and you go to
San Francisco in two and a half hours. That's what
the cell was. And people got caught up like all
the glamour and glitz of a high speed, shiny train nothing,
(07:01):
we got zero out of it.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
Well, maybe we're sadder but wiser now and we'll go
back to building a freeway system that twenty five years
ago was the envy of the nation.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
All right, Tom McClintock, thank you for coming.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
On again my pleasure, John, thanks for having.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Me, Republican Congressman from northern California. This is I mean,
this is good news today. At least federal tax money
is not going to be poured in anymore, although like
I said, that's going to take thirty seven days after
the response from the criminals at high speed Rail. And
I don't mean that, I mean that literally, these guys
(07:40):
are criminals. I don't know who can charge them who,
I don't know if anybody's investigating them. But this is
absurd that they were able to blow seventeen billion dollars
without a product. No way this would go on in
the private sector. That's impossible. And this just shows you
how freaking stupid much of the public. I mean, this
(08:01):
is not a surprise. It's been in front of our eyes.
Well actually yeah, it's been in front of our eyes.
That nothing is in front of our eyes, that there
are no trains, there are no tracks, there is nothing built. Unbelievable.
When we come back, well, we'll get into the details
here of what this report was from the Federal Railroad Administration,
(08:24):
the Department of Transportation. Sean Duffy. We've ended up with
a big zero here but at least finally, Trump is
cutting off funding for high speed rail.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
John Cobelt Show. We're on from one to four every day.
Moistline is Fridays in the three o'clock hour twice. Moistline
is where you vent your anger and frustration and you
should be calling about this. Eight seven seven moist steady
six eight seven seven moist eighty six. Federal funding for
high speed rail has been cut off by the Trump administration.
(09:01):
That's about four billion dollars on the table. It's no
longer on the table. And this is a great day now.
That does not stop the jackals in Sacramento. These guys
are criminals, con artists, and thieves and to prove it
to you, a spokeshole for this criminal California High Speed
(09:23):
Rail Authority provided this statement after the Trump administration announced
the cutoff. The governor's budget proposal, which is currently before
the legislature, extends another at least a billion dollars per
year in funding for the next twenty years twenty years,
(09:49):
providing the necessary resources to complete the project's initial operating segment.
So that's what's sitting in the new budget bill twenty
billion dollars a billion for the next twenty years at least.
So this is what these criminals in Sacramento in the
Assembly state Saidate Gavin Newsom high speed rail. They want
(10:12):
to take twenty billion dollars more of your tax money
and blow it on whoever is on the other end
of these contracts. They're trade unions, but I think normally
when you're in a construction union, you construct things, you
build things. There's nothing useful built nothing, no rail, no train,
(10:38):
no train stations, nothing. So those unions are stealing the money.
And then you have lawires, environmental consultants, business consultants, all
kinds of land use consultants. They all stole the money.
There was several audits. One of the audits said, there's
(11:00):
no invoices. We don't know who received these billions of dollars.
There are no records are there's literally no records, no paperwork,
no computer files, nothing, no paperwork, no computer files, no
train stations, no trains, no train track. It was as
(11:21):
if the money was set on fire. And Gavin Newsom
and the Assembly in the Senate is promising a billion
a year for the next twenty years. It'll be twenty
forty five and they'll still be spending tax money on
high speed Rail. Department of Transportation. In their press release
(11:44):
where they announced that they're cutting off the funding, they
wrote this helpful little history lesson. In two thousand and eight,
the California High Speed Rail system was represented as a
two phase visionary system connecting Los Angeles to San Francisco,
(12:05):
later on north to Sacramento and south to San Diego.
Since then, the project footprint has been dramatically reduced from
an eight hundred miles segment to one hundred and seventy
one miles to the current vision one hundred and nineteen miles,
(12:25):
commonly known as Bakersfield to Mercett, although I'm told actually
the one train station's in Wasco and the other is
in Madera, so they're actually spent seventeen billions so far
on a dream of connecting Waco with Madera. Despite substantial
(12:47):
federal funding and support, California High Speed Rail does not
have the capacity to deliver the full system. It has
not learned from its mistakes and mismanagement, has failed to
he had an organization capable of effectively and efficiently managing
project delivery. There's still numerous delays and cost overruns. At
(13:08):
this rate, California High Speed Rail Authority will never complete
the California High Speed Rail system. California High Speed Rail
Authority has not acted in good faith in making representations
to the Federal Railroad Administration. That's a really polite way
of saying they constantly lie. I mean, if you heard
(13:29):
Tom McClintock in the last segment, they constantly invented fantastical
ridership estimates that in no way would ever happen if
we lived one hundred million years. You cannot beat a
(13:50):
ninety nine dollars flight, a sixty nine dollars flight from
Los Angeles to San Francisco where it gets you there
in a little over an hour. You cannot beat that,
not with a train, none of it's high speed. That
was a total lie. They'll never get the ridership. And
(14:15):
they weren't supposed to use a dime of tax money.
That's another thing. I thought that was an ironclad rule,
no tax money. Well now newsom twenty billion dollars in
tax money over the next twenty years minimum. It's just
they do it in your face. They do it proudly
(14:38):
while they occasionally there's this little blip of indignation you
see at a hearing, but it's phony. They're acting. They
have to play to the camera, to the poor schlub
at home who's getting pissed. But do you believe they're spending
all this money on high speed rail? So you gotta
go on t and go yeah, yeah, you know, we
(15:01):
got to do an investigation here. This is getting out
of hand. I'm telling you, here's how the corruption work works.
You give the tax money, the high speed rail money,
to these trade unions, these labor unions. They in turn
give politicians generous campaign contributions. Same thing with these architects,
(15:23):
these land use experts, these lawyers, the environmental experts. They
all give money. It's a kickback scheme. It's a money
laundering scheme. The whole Democratic and the Democratic Assembly and
State Senate and the NEWSOB administration is part of this
massive money laundering scheme and they have collectively profited it
(15:48):
to seventeen billion dollars. The unions, the lawyers, the architects,
the engineers, and then they give a cut back to
the Assembly and State senators who voted for this monster.
They all knew it would never be built. They don't
care that it's going to ever, that it's not going
(16:09):
to be built. Part of the stick, part of the act,
it is to give these pompous, sanctimonious speeches about California
is going to take America into the future. We're going
to be on the cutting edge of high speed rail.
We're going to do wondrous things to save the planet
(16:33):
from the greenhouse gas. It's all scripted nonsense to manipulate
your emotions, all of it, and people fall for it
over and over and over again. It's fascinating to see
how dense much of human nature is. They do everything
(16:54):
but come into your bedroom at night, pull your pants down,
pull your wallet out, and set fire to your money
right in front of you and your family. And you'll
still vote for these guys, the same guys. You'll vote
for the same guys who come over your house and
set your money on fire. Unbelievable. Tony Strickland has a
(17:16):
lot to say on this. He's up next. He's the
state Senator from Huntington Beach, Republican, and he's he was
just on what was it yesterday or was it yesterday
because see this, this is what they're really about. The
State Senate wants to spend seven hundred thousand dollars on
(17:38):
a new study to see what the economic impact of
high speed rail would be between Waco and Madera. Really
seven hundred thousand dollars, Will you know? The people who
get this study contract are are are going to are
are going to funnel some of his back to the
(18:00):
politicians who approved the deal. Again, money laundering scam. They're criminals.
Why don't you treat them as criminals.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
You're listening to John Cobel's on Demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Welcome. We're on every day from one until four and
then if you miss anything, and today don't miss anything.
We're on after four o'clock on the podcast John Cobelt's
Show on Demand, and that's where you catch up. As
we've been telling you, bombshell from the Trump administration. The
Department of Transportation notified the high speed rail thieves that
(18:40):
they are cutting off funding. Four billion dollars in federal
funding is gone, and they have issued a three hundred
and ten page report, a long long list of problems
with the project. A lot of missed deadlines, a lot
of budget overruns, a lot of just flat out lies
about project to ridership. And as far as the federal
(19:02):
government is concerned, the gravy train has just been derailed.
They're not getting any more money as long as Trump
is in office. We're going to talk now a California
State Senator Tony Strickland. He's the Republican represents the Huntington
Beach area. Tony, how are you.
Speaker 3 (19:19):
I'm fantastic, John, How are you all right?
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Here's the thing that's been bothering me that we've been
talking about the response from high speed Rail is that
Newsom's current budget says the state will spend a billion
dollars a year every year for the next twenty years.
Is this true? Is this going to happen?
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Well, that's what he has said. I mean, he's put
the high speed rail on life support. But the support
for this project is doing every single day. And I'm
encouraging your listeners to call your local legislators and tell
him to tell them to pull the plug on this project.
I mean, this project is the worst public the public
(20:04):
proposal in the history of our nation. We're spending billions
of billions of dollars, by the way, billions of dollars
we don't have. And I've often said California doesn't have
a revenue problem, has a wasteful spending problem. We're wasting
hard earned dollars. They come to Sacramento, we're not funding
things that Prop thirty six to keep people safe. But
then we're putting billions of dollars in a train that
(20:26):
everybody knows will never be built as proposed.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
Is anybody embarrassed by this in Sacramento? Anybody at all.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Know how they're not? Honestly, I don't know how they're not.
And I think we need to hold these elected officials
accountable that keep you. Just the other day, as you know,
they spent seven hundred thousand dollars to do a study
on the train to go on from her Said to
Bakersfield again as proposed. Everybody knows is train's never going
to be built, and now they want to take it
(20:55):
and do the money just from Californias, and it's money
that we just don't have.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
There's nothing to study, there's no train, it's all empty land.
What are they going to study exactly exactly?
Speaker 3 (21:07):
And my guess is if they've originally proposed a train
from merced to Bakersfield. The voters at California would have
never gone forward with this project, and not alone. The
billions have already spent, They've already spent more than was proposed,
and they were supposed to be done in twenty twenty.
They're nowhere near close to being done. In fact, they
haven't even laid down tracks yet.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
That's what's ridiculous. The best they can offer is Bakersfield
to Mercede. I mean that's where they top out.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
No, nobody's even discussing San Francisco to LA and they know.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
That's not going to happen. And again, that's what was proposed,
and the people of California were lied to.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
So is this payoff to the unions, the construction unions
that finance a lot of campaigns. Is this this basic corruption?
Speaker 3 (21:55):
No? That's their argument is, oh, you know we're putting
people to work. No, you know we're wasting billions of dollars.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
Well, yes, they're allegedly putting people to work. There's just
no outcome here. There's no product.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
It's no work. Yeah, there's no product being done, and
no one could ever do that in the private sector.
Could you imagine getting private investment and saying, oh, it's
going to be done in twenty twenty for three to
three billion, and then turning around and say, we've already
spent what you originally proposed. Right now, it's the thirty
three billion, it's one hundred and twenty eight billion.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
And they've already blown at least seventeen billion. It's well
over one hundred billion over budget. There's only a small
fragment that they think they can build at sometime I
don't know, in twenty years. I mean, the whole thing
is such a colossal boondoggle. It's the worst project in
the history of the world. Here the worst public project.
(22:51):
And nobody's going to go to jail over this. There
isn't some kind of investigation. How could this not be fraud?
How's this not then stealing money?
Speaker 3 (23:00):
There needs to be investigations over this and follow the money,
as old saying, follow the money, but there needs to
be investigation. I'm glad that the federal government and the
Trumpan administration saw and stop wasting federal tax dollars. Now
we need to keep pushing to make sure we stop
wasting state tax dollars.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
Do you talk? I always wonder what goes on behind
the scenes the Democrats in the Assembly and in the Senate.
Do they ever whisper quietly off the record? Wow? This
thing is a disaster. This is I could tell.
Speaker 3 (23:34):
When I've been the leading voice against this project, and
I could tell in their eyes that they know they're
not voting for the right thing. I could just tell
why their mannerism is. But they don't tell me that privately.
But I've been the leading voice against this, and I
was a leading voice against it one of those first
proposed twelve years ago.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
And what can people do? Yeah, I know you said
they should call up their assemblymen and states senator, but
they're just seems. I wish them some kind of mechanism
to get us out of this, because if the whole
legislature is corrupt and this is just stealing as much
money as they can for as long as they can
and stay ahead of you know, the Feds, the investigators,
(24:15):
then you know we're just going to keep getting screwed in. Definitely.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
Well, I think I'm hopeful that a few of these
members who keep voting for this lose their reelection campaign.
You want people to wake up here in Sacramento. Have
them started losing some of their members that have been
voting for this nonsense, then then and only then they'll
wake up. And in fact, I do believe whoever the
next governor of California is is going to pull the
(24:40):
plug if it isn't already pulled ahead of time. Michael
is to get this high speed real that we pull
the plug before the next election twenty twenty six. But
if not, I'm confident that whoever the next governor is
is not going to move forward on this project, knowing
how unpopular it is.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Do you think your party is equipped with it's message
and money and the right candidates that they could make
a big stink about this and get some SATs.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
I mean, I didn't come back to the Sacramento just
to be a center. I was already a center. I
didn't need the title. I came back here to hopefully
bring some common sense and make California golden again. Like
it's this is just absurd that we tripled the spending
in the last ten years and we still have a
creminline infrastructure, we still have homelessness is spiraling out of control,
(25:28):
and we have crime on the rise. We've tripled our
spending and that's why I always say, you know, we
don't have a revenue problem. We're just wasting people's money.
And we need to have more oversight. We need to
do more what we can. We need to fund things
like the Prop thirty six that helps keep us safe.
That should be the number one role of government is
public safety. And this governor and this legislature out of
(25:51):
touch with everyday citizens.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
All right, Tony Strickland, good talking with you again.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Always great talking to you, John, Thanks for coming on.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
And Tony Strickland. He's the States or a Republican out
of Honeyton Beach and he's been very vocal about just
flat out ending this high speed rail disaster. And as
we've been telling you, the Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy today
he oversees the Federal Railroad Administration. They did a review.
(26:19):
The report is over three hundred pages and they have
a long list of sins committed by the High Speed
Rail or the high speed Rail executives, and money's being
cut off. They were due four billion dollars. They already
they already blew seven billion in federal dollars over the
last fifteen years, and again there isn't one inch of
(26:42):
high speed rail track. We'll continue.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI Am
six forty.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
John Cobelt here, and if you're just joining us, we'll
talk more about it later in the show. The high
speed rail pride took a big blow today. The Trump
administration said no more federal money. Four billion dollars on
the table, and Trump and Sean Duffy, the Transportation Secretary,
(27:11):
said no. They released three hundred and ten pages covering
nine categories of incompetence and malfeasance on the part of
high speed rail. Look, I'm going to say this a
thousand times. It's a criminal operation and I'll be treated
as such. And I'm waiting to see who you know. Obviously,
our Attorney General isn't going to do it, but he
should rob Bonte if he wasn't part of this dishonest conspiracy.
(27:36):
I mean, they're stealing money in front of us. Here
is what Sean Duffy had to say, the Transportation Secretary.
He went on Fox News to explain why the money's
getting cut off, cut wood.
Speaker 5 (27:49):
Timelines, and the budget for the California High speed rail
is that they can't meet them right, And so we
have four billion dollars that has been authorized to go
to California to build this project, and we don't want
to invest in Boon Doggles, and so we basically found
that they're not going to be able to complete the project,
which I think all of Californians and all of Americans knew.
(28:09):
But we're going to give them thirty days to respond
to us. If they think we're wrong, we'll hear them out.
But after that, if they don't make a good case,
we're going to take that money back.
Speaker 1 (28:18):
You know, I want to see high speed rail in America, Danna.
Speaker 3 (28:20):
You go to Europe.
Speaker 5 (28:21):
They have high speed rail everywhere and it works. Why
it can't be built in America and why it can't
be built within you know? You know, timeframes that work
for the people that invest in these projects makes no
sense to me. And again, we'll look for good projects
to invest in. This does not appear to be one
of them. Not one high speed track has been laid
(28:41):
and we're sixteen billion dollars in seventeen years into the project.
And again, this has all the marketings of Boon.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Doggle that's Sean Duffy, head of the Transportation Department. Listen
to this little worm, that weirdo Scott Wiener, Democrats from
San Francisco. Last I heard, he was against making buying
teenage kids for sex a felony. He was against that.
(29:09):
He's that guy, Scott Wheenersay it thinks it's okay for
you to buy teenagers or sex. Okay, Well, he's got
an opinion on this. He says. The Trump administration has
been laying the groundwork for a month. Yeah, that's true.
They're completely hostile, not just a California high speed rail
but rail in general. Well, you know something, every public
(29:33):
rail line in this country loses a lot of money.
Amtrak would be bankrupt if it was a private organization.
There is no rail that can support itself because there's
relatively few people who want to take railroad rides across
the country anywhere. There's some, but not enough to make
(29:56):
a profit. So we're pouring a lot of tax money
into a system that's largely rejected by the public. And
it's bad enough. We got the albatross of the old
railroad lines around our next so we got to pay
for that into infinity. But Why would we add high
speed rail when clearly there's no market for it, and
(30:17):
even worse, they can't build it. Wiener, a staunch proponent
of the Bullet Train, according to the San Francisco Chronicle,
acknowledged the project's challenges. Listen to this, Wiener says, quote,
we certainly have to do better in California in terms
of project delivery. You buffoon. It's seventeen years and seventeen
(30:44):
billion dollars and only can say, well, we certainly have
to do better. You know what a con man does.
A con man when you say, hey, you know I
already gave you ten thousand dollars. I want my money back.
I'm not getting a return on my in back. Oh
you know, let's look to the future. Okay, if you
(31:05):
just give me another ten thousand dollars, then I They
always change the subject, look to the future, and then
give you their new pitch to lute you again, which
is what Newsom does. Newsom is a classic shakedown slick
haired con man because he starts battling about California being
a leader in America for high speed rail and waiter
(31:28):
the same thing. It's not a reason to start canceling
major transformative public infrastructure projects. But it's seventeen years and
seventeen billion. If that's not a reason, what is a reason?
How is it transformative? It's a train that goes from
a train that goes from Madera to Wasco. What's that transforming?
(31:54):
He just says nonsense, and nobody challenges on him. That's
what's amazing. Nobody says is Scott, Scott, get your hands
out of your pants. Scott, look at me. What is
a major transformative project high speed rail Wasco to Madera. Seriously,
(32:15):
seventeen billion, seventeen years, and you need you need billions
and billions more. What is wrong with you? He says.
We need to find a way to get these projects
done more efficiently and more effectively. We need to find
a way go back to what Tom McClintock said. They
were pitching the legislature on this idea twenty five years ago.
(32:40):
Twenty five years ago, when Great Davis was governor. They
were pitching them high speed rail. They had consultants and
they had backers and boosters. And now they're saying, well,
maybe we'll make it a public private partnership. Yes, they're
going to get private money. Have been trying to get
(33:01):
private money from day one. It's been twenty five years
of the entire world saying no, no private money. You
hear about high speed rail in China and in Japan
and in Spain. You notice none of the companies that
built those projects ever show up at a news conference
(33:23):
with high speed rail officials. They've all been asked, how
many times can you ask somebody twenty five years? Imagine
asking a girl for twenty five years to go out
on a date. I don't know by time you and
she in your fifties, maybe she's not going out with you.
Nobody wants a piece of this, and the reason was unanimous.
(33:44):
They thought the California political culture was corrupt. Now most
of the people who were part of the corrupt culture
back in the year two thousand when this nonset started, well,
they're now out of office or dead. So we have
a second generation, maybe a third generation of corrupt buffoons
(34:06):
who are looting you. Kevin Kylie introduced a legislation on
January sixth to make the project ineligible for further funding.
He's a Congressman from northern California. Do you know what
Gavin Newsom did On that day, he drove a symbolic
(34:29):
spike into the ground to celebrate the rail line's first
twenty two mile segment from the border of Tallarian Kern
Counties to Poplar Avenue in Wasker. There's no rail there.
It was just a ceremonial spike. That's all Newsom did.
(34:52):
That's what a con man does, has some showy public ceremony,
a gimmick, a stunt, a gag, make you laugh, make
you smile, keep voting for him. We come back. We're
gonna have Alex Stone on from ABC News. That whack
(35:17):
job that firebombed those older Jewish people in Colorado. He
actually wanted to use weapons and have a big mass
murder event, but he couldn't get He couldn't buy the
guns because he's in the country illegally. Alex has that
(35:37):
story coming up next. Debra Mark Live in the KFI
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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