California Attorney General Rob Bonta May Be in Big Trouble!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I think my wife is hilarious, which is probably why
we're married to each other. And one of her pet
peeves when Holly gets annoyed at someone, I find it
so funny, just the Holly's a very quiet person to

(00:21):
most of I don't know, people who don't know her
very well think she's very quiet and think that I
don't know. I guess because you're quiet, I guess people
get the sense that maybe you're not as opinionated. But
she has just these hilarious, burning political resentments against certain politicians.
Like she's not as in the weeds of politics as

(00:41):
I am, but she certainly has deep, strong opinions and
she has certain these little resentments against certain people that
she hates. Like she remembered growing up as a kid,
she was like a teenager, And it was just after
Amy Klobashar was first elected as a US Senator to

(01:06):
represent Minnesota, and Holly grew up in Minnesota, and she
participated in high school in this like the State History
Day Championships, where high school kids around the state would
do some kind of history day project, and Holly actually
did really well. I think she like represented the whole
state of Minnesota or something. Got to go to Washington,
d C. And got to meet and you know, so

(01:28):
all the kids from Minnesota who went to this thing,
they got to meet one of their US senators, Amy Klobshark,
And Holly remembered seeing Amy Klobashar at some dinner where
Klobashar mistook a small like I guess it must have
been like a little bowl or a little picture or
something of ranch dressing that Klobashar mistook for soup while

(01:51):
they were eating. And ever since then, Holly just thought
Amy Klobeshar was the biggest moron in the history of mankind.
She has these burning little resentments against a lot of athletes.
For example, any athlete that engaged in, as Holly refers
to it, p nile impropriety. So if you're a professional

(02:14):
athlete and Holly learns about some shady thing that you did,
sleeping around or whatever, you go on her bad list
and you never get off. So Tom Brady who started
dating oh who is his wife a Giselle? Who started
dating Giselle while his first girlfriend, Bridget moynihan was pregnant

(02:38):
with his son. Oh, Holly's never forgiven Tom Brady for that,
or you know, she never forgets, that's for darn shirk.
And she's always like hated Tom Brady as a result.
For twenty years, she despised Tom Brady. Ben Roethlisberger. Ben
Roethlisberger got he was like accused of sexually assaulting some

(03:01):
woman and the cops ultimately didn't charge him, but they
released a statement where it was basically like, yeah, we
think you did it, but we don't quite have enough evidence. Yeah,
ally's never forgiven Ben Roethlisberg. Oh big Ben. Yeah, the
announcers love Ben Roethlisberger for some stupid reason. Yeah, Holly
never forgot that about Ben Roethlisberger, although he did say

(03:23):
kind of, I think he kind of turned his life
around a little bit after that, got married and started
going to church and stuff like that. Dwight Howard the
basketball Anyway, Holly has these lingering, burning resentments certain politicians,
certain people, you know, prominent people whom she just hates

(03:50):
and grudges. She just holds on too, but she's just
never letting go of. And one of those people for
whom she bears this grudge, and it was a result
of accidentally somehow her email wound up getting onto his
like statewide email mailing list is Attorney General Rob Bonta,

(04:17):
the Attorney General of the state of California. Now, Rob
Bonta is loathsome just from pure straight up politics, believes
the opposite of everything you and I believe. Not a
good guy. He also he and his wife, Mia Banta,

(04:42):
who's a member of the state legislature, which has caused,
by the way, some a few moments have happened where
like Rob Bonta's supporting legislation at Mia Bonta's pushing legislation,
and their husband and wife duo, and that's led in
certain circumstances to certain people raising ethics complaints about the

(05:02):
fact that they are married couple, but you know the
way in which they interacted within government. They're from the
Bay Area, and one of the things about Robin Me
and Bonta was that not not only are both of
them extremely pro abortion, like to the point of carrying
abortion legislation. Mia Banta, for example, this year, was trying

(05:26):
to carry some kind of really bad abortion legislation that
wound up I think dying in committee. But basically it
would have tried to force every hospital, including Catholic hospitals,
to do quote emergency abortions, which there are certain kinds
of procedures that might have to happen, like a premature
delivery or something where the baby might wind up dying,

(05:48):
or like an ectopic pregnancy removal that sometimes are characterized
as abortion but are ethically distinct. But it was then
accompanied by other legislati with with the legislation talking about
having MiFi pristone on hand within emergency rooms. Well, mifhi
pristone is not an emergency abortion procedure. Pristone is a

(06:12):
drug that induces abortion over the course of about a
forty eight to seventy two hour period, so it's not
an emergency abortion thing. Basically, it was Robin. It was
Mia Banta specifically. I don't know if Rob publicly took
a position on it. I'm sure he supported it. Mia
Banta wanted every emergency room in the state of California

(06:33):
to be an abortion clinic. That's effectively what they're trying
to do. Not only are they super pro abortion, but
Rob and Mia Bonta have actually shared the story about
when they were law students. I believe how she got
pregnant and they sort of weren't planning. I guess to

(06:57):
get pregnant around that time they had they aborted their child,
and it's one of these It's one of those instances
where you know, you hate the sin and you love
the sinner. You judge the action, you don't judge the motive.

(07:21):
It's a little difficult for me, though, to muster up
a ton of sympathy for a couple that are going
through law school, who are presumably about to be hired
for fairly lucrative, able to support a family on even
just one income type jobs two that you know, this

(07:46):
is not a homeless woman with no means of support
who finds her self pregnant and is desperate and doesn't
know what to do and has no way out. You know,
I don't know it. That's a hard thing to swallow. Now.
The reasons why Holly hated Rob Bonta are a bit
separate from that, you know. And again I don't want

(08:09):
to get too much into judgment for them, and you know,
there before the grace of God go I. But it
is a thing with the abortion decisions that I do
think sometimes pro lifers maybe because there's nothing that's that
much practical else to do other than to say you
know a lot of women don't even want to have abortions,

(08:32):
a lot of women are pressured into having abortions. But
I do think with the abortion decision, there's something on
the scale between pressure and selfishness, and that our choices
can have a lot of different kinds of motivations pushing
us towards different kinds of decisions, and maybe there's some
sort of legitimate pressures and near coercion and some selfishness,

(08:54):
and maybe there's some mixture of both. Humans are very
complicated creatures, and I don't know how how profitable it
is for me to stand in judgment against someone for
whatever level of subjective guilt they have. I think maybe
the best thing to do is just to say the
action was wrong and to wish they hadn't done it,
and I just leave it at that. But there is

(09:16):
a part of me that sees that circumstance and thinks
abortion shouldn't be legal. There. I mean, abortion shouldn't be
legal in any circumstance, but the idea of abortion being
justifiable somehow there is a pretty weak argument, even weaker
than in other arguments I would say. Anyway. One of

(09:40):
the main reasons Holly was so annoyed at Rob Bonta
was because he would send out this weekly Attorney General's
email and he would have the TikTok of the week.
And this was in the middle This was so weird.
This was in the middle of you know, during the
Biden administration, when Republicans had laid out pretty conclusively that

(10:05):
TikTok was a Chinese government owned entity that was dedicated
to stealing user information. There was plenty of evidence that
the one like, the Chinese were engaged in a very
sophisticated use of TikTok to genuinely make Americans stupider, while

(10:27):
the Chinese version of TikTok was only allowing like you know,
like maths videos and the crap like that, and tons
of other states attorneys general were saying this is bad.
But for some reason, Democrats decided that this was a
politically coded thing. So all these Democrat attorneys general were
supporting TikTok and all the Republican attorneys general were opposing TikTok.

(10:48):
And it got to the point where Bonta was such
a blind partisan that he was promoting the TikTok of
the week when it was and at a certain point
it even got to where like there were even Democrats
Attorney's general who were like, hey, you know this, this
isn't great. And I mean that bill to get rid

(11:09):
of TikTok or to force it to have to force
TikTok to have American ownership was passed I believe in
a Democrat controlled Congress, it wasn't a Republican controlled Congress,
and signed by President Trump. Now, Trump then did a

(11:30):
one to eighty flip flop on TikTok because he thought
it helped him in the twenty twenty four campaign, and
so he became much more favorable towards it. Now. I
think he's negotiated some way that TikTok's owned now by
American owners or the Chinese have divested anyway. But Rob
Bonto was promoting the TikTok of the week, and this
just made Holly so furious at him, just like, this

(11:54):
is so stupid. First, why is the Attorney General of
California promoting some stupid little RinkyDink video. Secondly, it's invariably
this big left wing thing. Third, why am I on
his email list? I hate this. Holly was just flat
out furious at the guy. Well, there's a big political
scandal going on in Oakland. This prominent political family, the

(12:20):
Trong family, has been wrapped up in a federal bribery investigation.
I believe they've been charged now. It appears that Rob
Banta's campaign fund spent four hundred and sixty eight thousand

(12:43):
dollars on lawyers relating to this investigation. The Trong family
had been tight with Bonta. Bonta wound up giving back
one hundred and fifty five thousand dollars worth of campaign
contributions from the Troung family. So Banta gives five payments

(13:05):
to a private law firm from his campaign account, and
he issues a couple of statements to indicate that he's
spending money. His campaign account was spending this money.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
Anyone who committed a crime, the AG wants to ensure
that anyone who committed the age wants to committed as count.
So he engaged side legal counsel to help his partners.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
Anyone who committed a crime, the.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Crime is how the count.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
Engaged, So he engaged in law, enforce law.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
Pursue justice. He's not been charged with the crime here,
but he did return has five thousand dollars worth of
can't committed a crime as hell, and who committed anyone
who account it's outside council n crime here.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
But he did return.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
One hundred and fifty five thousand believed from from the
doctor to sign up. They couldn't share much more capacity.
Is attorney again that we're learning about this.

Speaker 1 (14:13):
We did ask.

Speaker 2 (14:15):
Money asking tonight again, we've just learned a lot of
this with the one hundred and fifty five thousand dollars
worth of campaign donations he received from the dolls. Vonta's
advisor Dan Newman citing that ongoing investigations really couldn't share
much more information with me about this, but.

Speaker 1 (14:38):
Banta Banta said that he gave this money. Uh, he
engaged outside legal counsel to help his law enforcement partners
pursue justice. To help his law enforcement partners pursue justice.

(15:00):
That sounds like absolute bs. That makes no sense at
all if the FBI and the Department of Justice. The
FBI is a division of the Department of Justice. The
FBI the dj is investigating a federal bribery case involving

(15:25):
public officials in the East Bay in Oakland, in the
Oakland area. First, I don't know that they need extra help,
I think they got it. The FBI has got a
lot of money, they got a lot of agents, they
got a lot of good lawyers. The dj has got
a lot of very good lawyers. I'm sure that the

(15:46):
prosecutors for I'm not sure which district, which federal district
this is that Oakland's in. I assume it's the Northern
District of California. They're fine, They've got a US Attorney's office.
They're good. I'm highly doubtful that they need help. Secondly,
if they do need help, they're not going to request

(16:07):
help from Rob bonta political candidate, because remember that that's
who's paying this. This isn't Rob Bonta offering the services
of the California Attorney General's office. The Attorney General's office
which does have relevant people that could help with a
law enforcement criminal prosecution effort, where you would expect maybe

(16:31):
some level of coordination of you know, should this be
a federal charge versus should this be a state charge?
Are there federal and state charges? And maybe there would
be some intersection there between the relevant US Attorney's office
versus California state level or local prosecutors. Sure that would
make sense. Rob Bonta is the attorney general. He does

(16:53):
have the resources of the Attorney General's office. He's got
a lot of lawyers, he has a lot of investigators.
How do suspose he could probably get the California Highway
Patrol to help or whatever relevant you know, policing entities,
whatever the state equivalent of the FBI would be in
this situation. No, he wasn't offering that he was using

(17:16):
his campaign account to pay for a bunch of lawyers.
I mean, theoretically, if I had five hundred thousand dollars
to blow, I could have done the same. What Rob
Bonds is saying is not much different from like me saying,
oh I don't like corruption in the Bay Area either. Hey, FBI,

(17:38):
I John Girardi, John Q citizen, I'll let me give
you five hundred thousand dollars. I'll pay for some lawyers
and they can help you guys out too. That that
would be That would be silly. The FBI doesn't need
help from random private people to throw some lawyers their
way to help out investigating things. So what it likely

(17:59):
means is that, I mean, the best case spin on
this is that Rob Bonta is lawyering up that the
best spin on it is that he is using his
campaign funds to lawyer up to protect against accusations of

(18:26):
misappropriations of campaign money or something like that, which I
would presume that there's a way in which using campaign
funds for that purpose would be legitimate. Now, on the
other hand, I mean, if it's an investigation, if it's
an investigation about appropriate use of campaign funds, presumably you

(18:49):
can use campaign funds to pay for legal representation to
help you with an investigation surrounding campaign funds. Now, if
it's Rob, I do wonder though, as a lawyer, there
might be something separate between Rob Bonta political campaigns over

(19:09):
here and Rob Bonta the person who doesn't want to
go to jail over here? Is Robonta using his campaign
money to pay for five, you know, four hundred something
thousand dollars worth of expensive lawyers to protect? Is Rob
bonta campaign fund paying for the legal defense of Rob Bonta,

(19:32):
the person who doesn't want to go to jail. We'll
dig into that when we return here on the John
Girardi Show. Rob Bonta big news story that he's spent
four hundred plus thousand dollars on expensive lawyers in what
he says, well, I'm just helping out federal investigators investigate

(19:55):
political corruption in the Oakland area surrounding the Dwong family.
Only this prominent family that has spent a bunch of
money in inappropriate political influence campaigns. And he's, Oh, I'm
helping them out. You're not helping out federal investigators. What
Rob Bonta is doing is cooperating with a federal investigation.

(20:20):
That's what's happening. The Feds think slimy stuff happened with
political contributions to Rob Bonta. Bonta has hired for this
investigation into his political campaigns, a bunch of expensive lawyers
to cooperate, to allow him to cooperate with federal investigators

(20:46):
as it relates to his campaign stuff. And I guess
my best I get I don't know one hundred percent
all the rules associated with this. And Rob BoNT again,
the Attorney General of the State of California, our chief
law enforcement officer, who is now under this microscope, who
announced that he wasn't going to run for governor. The

(21:07):
whole thing smells slimy to me, especially I sort of
think about, well, you when you get campaign funding, you
have to kind of use it for authorized reasons. It
has to be sort of connected to your campaigning in
some way. So I could understand if there were an

(21:30):
investigation into your campaign, I could understand that using your
campaign funds for lawyers to assist with an investigation into
your campaign or something related to your campaign or campaign expenditures,
I can see how that would be legitimate. I guess
one of my questions though, is when does this slide

(21:52):
from Rob bonta political campaign world into just Robonda's personal
legal defense. And maybe the two are so inextricable. Maybe
that's not an illegitimate use of money. I don't know,
but this is embarrassing for Rob Bonta. I think he
is reframing this to try to make it less embarrassing. Oh,

(22:13):
I'm gonna help them find justice. Well, if you were
helping them just find justice against people who have nothing
to do with you doing things that are bad, you
would have just lent the services of the Attorney General's office.
Bonta is cooperating with federal investigators or getting lawyers to
help cooperate in maybe in such a way as to

(22:37):
help Rob Bonta himself avoid legal consequences. I think something
like that is actually what's going on here. When don't
we return? Does anyone really want to be governor of California?
That is next on the John Jrardy Show. I don't
know if anyone wants to be the governor of California.

(23:01):
It's kind of impressive how hollowed out the field is
for the campaign, where there's only two Republican candidates seemingly,
and by the way, Republicans should pray to God that
it's only two. There's a there's an outside chance of
the top two primary breaking in our favor between Chad

(23:23):
Bianco and Steve Hilton. All right, anyway, let's let's let
me continue. So right now, the field of people running
for governor of California include the two Republicans Chad Bianco,
I believe is a sheriff of San Bernardino County. Steve Hilton,

(23:49):
Fox News talking head Katie Porter, former member of the
House of Representatives, who seems to be somehow one of
the bigger names and had been sort of lean before
all these videos came out of what a total jerk
she is. Various videos came out of her yelling at people,

(24:09):
yelling at interview interviewers, yelling at her staff, et cetera.
Lost former mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Viaregosa, who's been
eyeballing the governor's office for years and years and years
and years. And then Javier Basera, the former Secretary of
Health and Human Services, who had been Attorney General of

(24:30):
California and had been a member of the House of
Representatives before that. That's the list. It's not exactly star studded,
and a lot of prominent people have decided not to run,
not just Kamala Harris, but now Rob Bonta, the Attorney General,

(24:50):
saying he's not going to run.

Speaker 2 (24:53):
You have.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
Kamala Harris, Rob Bonta. Alex Padilla, the US Senator representing California,
has become a bit more prominent lately, and there are
lots of rumors swirling around that he might run. He
decided that he's not gonna run for governor California. And

(25:16):
I think I understand the reason why running for senator
in California. Being a senator is such a better job
than being the governor of California. If you are a
US Senator, you don't have to do much of anything.

(25:39):
You just vote on stuff. You go to committee hearings,
you listen to what people have to say, and you
vote on stuff. You vote yay, you vote nay. You've
probably already made up your mind before you even walk
into the committee hearing to hear about the legislation that's
being proposed. But fundamentally, your job is just to vote

(26:01):
on things. You don't really have to do anything. You
don't have to manage a bureaucracy. You don't have to
come up with plans. You don't really have to negotiate
too much. Unless you're the Senate majority leader or something.
You're not negotiating with the legislature anything. You fundraise for yourself,

(26:21):
You meet with people, and you vote on things. Your
job is fundamentally quite easy if you're a senator. If
you're governor, you got to manage all kinds of stuff.
You oversee a massive bureaucracy. You have to negotiate with
the state legislature on budgetary stuff. You always have to

(26:43):
be the adult in the room. The state legislature always
has the opportunity to act like children and not deal
with problems. The buck really does stop with the governor,
and Newsom has come up against this multiple times. As
much of a radical as I do think Newsom is,
there's something about being the governor that pulls out of
somebody a certain level of adult in the room responsibility,

(27:04):
where the governor realizes we cannot keep spending deep into
the red. As much as Democrats want to fund every
single X Y Z pet project that they ever have
any idea that pops into their head of ultimately we
have to say no to some things. And who's the
person who says no. It's the governor. The legislature never
behaves responsibly. They'll just keep spend spend, and Newsom has

(27:28):
to be the one to pump the brakes on things,
either by telling people in advance, I'm not going to
sign this, don't send it to my desk, or by
vetoing things. So Newsom has had to do that and
it gets him no great love, okay us. When Newsom
introduced his revision to the state budget back in May,

(27:53):
oh my gosh, the Liberals were furious back in May,
and and it's kind of part of the remarkable political
turnaround Newsom's had over the last four months where he's
now the Darling of the left because he's you know,
he got Prop fifty passed and he's going to give
Democrats probably five extra seats in the House of Representatives
as a result of it. But Newsome as of early

(28:19):
June was, oh my gosh, persona non grata. So let
me explain what happened. Every January, the governor introduces his
proposed budget to the state, to the state legislature, and
they work on it, they investigate it, they build it up.
In May every year the governor releases his what's called

(28:42):
the May revise, where it's basically, okay, we actually got
our tax revenue in in April from the April fifteen
tax day. Now we have to revise the budget that
we introduced in January. The governor's going to revise it,
and oh my gosh, the May revise was dreadful. Our

(29:07):
spending had way over committed and revenues were way down,
and we were at this point where we learned this
term this year structural deficits that it's not just a
question of we had a bad year, it's we are
facing permanent problems because over the last you know, six years,

(29:33):
state spending has increased by an average of nine percent
a year, and state revenues have increased by an average
of about six percent a year. And that's just not sustainable.
And so as a result, we're not just facing a
one off, you know, bad year with a big budget deficit.
We're looking at twenty thirty billion dollar budget deficits every

(29:56):
year going forward because our commitments to spending have just
outpaced our commitments to year over year spending have outpaced
our revenues. So Newsom has to make a bunch of cuts,
including cutting And this was right in the midst of
all the Trump versus Newsom fights over the California National

(30:17):
Guard and ice raids and all that stuff. Newsom has
to announce that he has to roll back the funding
that he gave he and the legislature gave for medical
coverage for illegal aliens. He has to cut back some
of it. I don't think he cut back all of it.
I think there's still some illegal aliens still eligible for

(30:38):
medical but he has to cut back much of it.
I happened to be in June. I went to the
state capitol to testify against an abortion bill, and I'm
in the Senate Chamber and I get to the appropriate

(30:58):
Senate Chamber where this Senate Health Committee I think was
going to meet. But I got there early and the
Senate Budget Committee was still in there for the end
of their hearing. So I got the tail end of
the Senate Budget Committee and I was about to hear
the start of the Senate Health Committee hearing. So I'm

(31:19):
there for a Senate Budget Committee hearing. And one of
the things that happens during committee hearings is usually they
introduce a bill, the author speaks in favor of it,
the author has two experts who testify for a couple
of minutes about it. If there's any opposition, then the
opposition can testify in opposition to it for a couple

(31:40):
of minutes. The lawmakers can ask questions, and then they
have what's called the me too's, where basically a line
forms next to a microphone in the committee room somewhere,
and all these different people who represent different political groups,
citizen groups, individuals just representing themselves if they want. But

(32:04):
it's usually so and so on. Behalf of the SEIU
Local two thirteen labor union, We oppose SB one two
three oh, so and so on. Behalf of the California
Medical Association. We are in support of AB four five six.
And the idea of the me toos is you're not

(32:24):
allowed to talk for a long time. You just get
to the mic, you say who you are and whom
you represent, and you say that you are either in
support or in opposition. That's it. Well, during the Senate
Budget Committee hearing, they let the me toos just go on,
which I've never seen before. Maybe that's more common in
the Budget Committee, but I've never seen that before. At

(32:45):
the state Legislature, and I've been there a bunch of times,
and all these people in the me too line, it
was representatives from all these different liberal activist group liberal
groups like different like grant rights advocacy things and this
non profit of that, and all these left wing grips,

(33:06):
all of them just spitting mad, furious at Gavin Newsom.
Oh my gosh, I haven't seen so many liberals so
mad before in my life. And I'm sitting there like
this building lives in an alternate dimension where like sixty

(33:27):
percent of Californians don't support medical funding for illegal aliens.
Even among Californians, this is like a sixty forty issue.
You would think in the Capital that it was a
ninety ten issue the other way. That's the attitude that
these lawmakers have, and these lawmakers are so many they're mad,
specifically at Gavin Newsome, like they were said the governor said,

(33:52):
like spitting his name, and individual Democrats were furious they
were voting against this, that they were voting against this budget.
And you had Scott Wiener, the chair of the Budget Committee.
This is the source of all of Wiener's power, Like
why does anyone pay attention to Scott Wiener. Well, he's
the chair of the Budget Committee. So if you want
your pet project funded, you'd be nice to Skot Wiener

(34:13):
and you vote for his other stupid legislation. Scott Wiener
is there with his sort of compromise bill that he
and the Assembly and Senate leadership came up with so
a little softer than Newsome's cuts, but even his plan,
there were Democrats like spitting mad at that and didn't
want to vote for that either. And some people like,

(34:36):
we recognize you're in a tough place, Senator Wiener, and
you're trying your best to moderate things between the governor
and blah blah blah, but you know this is unacceptable
and I could see. Yeah, so again, all of this,
all this I think relates to why someone doesn't want
to run for governor. It sucks. It's a hard harr job.

(35:02):
You gotta deal with a lot of people, and if
you're not the adult in the room, well you'll the
state will spend in the red and there will be
all kinds of disastrous economic consequences that way, or you
act like the adult and all these people hate your guts.
So yeah, I guess I could see why Kamala Harris
doesn't want to do it. It's a ton of work,
especially relative to being a senator. I can see why

(35:25):
Alex Padilla doesn't want to do it. He's Alex Padia
is having the time of his life, you know, busting
into people Christy Noam Press conferences and acting like he's
been martyred or something. Yeah, Alex Padia is having a
fine time appearing in you know, yes on Prop fifty ads.
I feel like, especially on the Democrats side, the field,

(35:46):
the field is really hollow. Other than Jabier Basera. Like
the list of people, it's all people who kind of
need jobs, like Javier Basara doesn't really have a political
job right now. Katie Porter does not have a political
job right now. Antonio vire Gosa does not have a
political job right now. It seems like they all kind
of just want relevance. When we returned the other reason

(36:09):
why maybe no one wants to be governor. You can't
actually fix any of California's problems if you're a Democrat.
Next on the John Girardi Show, I'm talking about why
it doesn't seem like any prominent Democrats want to run
for governor of California. Rob Bonda doesn't want to run,
Kamala Harris doesn't want to run, Alex Padilla doesn't want
to run. All these people don't want to run. And

(36:30):
I think the one reason is it's a very difficult job.
The other reason is this, and it was revealed when
Javier Basera gave his interview a couple months ago after
he announced, he gave this interview and was asked by
one of the local LA area reporters, so, what are
you going to do differently with regards to housing? Housing
costs really high, it makes cost of living really expensive

(36:51):
in California. What are you going to do differently from
prior Democrats? And but Sarah just could not answer the question,
wouldnt He said, I'd gather a bunch of experts together
and I'd do what they say. It's all right, well,
you have no position you're going to offer on anything,
And I realized, I mean, I thought it was a
ridiculous answer, But also, like, what's Psarah going to say?

(37:14):
The Democrats position on what to do about housing is
locked in by the demands of their donor class. Their
environmentalist donors don't really want more building because they think
too much building of the kind that would actually make
an impact is bad for the environment. So you either

(37:37):
have to commit heresy that would cut you off from
political fundraising money and you lose, or you just don't
fix problems. And that's ultimately what this is the catch
twenty two that any Democrat is going to be in.
They can't get elected governor if they propose to do
the things that would actually fix the problems. That'll do it.

(38:00):
John did already show see you next time on Power Talk.