April 3, 2025 • 37 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 1 (04/03) - What type of impact have the tariffs Pres. Trump imposed yesterday had already? Gov. Newsom says he isn't using his podcast to impact policy in this state. Michael Dobuski comes on the show to talk about the fact that Amazon has put in a bid to buy TikTok. Biden staffers knew the debate with Trump was going to be disaster.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can't. I am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobelt podcast on the iHeartRadio
app John Cobelt's Show. Good that you're here. If you
like listening, We're on every day from one until four o'clock.
If you miss anything, you can pick it up on
the podcast John Cobelt's Show on demand. It's same as
the radio show, and you can listen to that anytime
(00:24):
after four o'clock. What has crowded out just about all
other news coverage today, no matter what media outlet you
watch or listen to or read, is Trump's tariff program
and the effects it's going to have on the US economy,
your life, the world.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
And it is.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
It's a full blown hysteria right now, absolute hysteria. And
the thing is, I was just thinking about this right
before the start of the show. I'm not sure I've
ever had a private conversation where the other person used
the word tariff like it's one of those words you
might see in a business article, you might hear on
(01:10):
an odd business report, if you even watch those kind
of things. It's just not something that people concern themselves with.
They don't know a lot about. And now that we
have this explosive event with the Trump charging high tariffs
on all these other countries. Everybody's supposed to have an opinion.
(01:30):
Everybody is supposed to support it or be against it.
And the truth is, nobody knows what's going to happen
at all, and most people probably don't understand what this
is anyway. The only thing they want to know is
it's going to drive up prices, because that's certainly the fear.
A lot of people are expecting it who analyze these things,
(01:52):
and what's the reason for this. So we're going to
try to go through the basics here. A tariff is
a tax, and the tax is paid on the importation
of goods coming from other countries, and we charge tariffs.
Other countries charge tariffs on our goods, but other there's
(02:18):
some countries that tax our goods a lot more than
we tax theirs, and we've had a trade imbalance for
decades and decades. We buy more stuff from foreign countries
than they buy from us. We buy a lot more stuff,
especially manufactured goods, and over the years because of that,
(02:44):
a lot of factories have closed. It's a cliche to
say we don't make much anymore, and we don't. I
lived this because my dad was a factory worker after
he came from Poland. The joke in the family was
every seven years is fact closed and he was out
of work. And it's true three times in a row
in my lifetime growing up, his factory closed and he
(03:09):
finally moved on to a fourth factory and he was
able to keep that job for I guess about eighteen years.
But about the time I was born, he was on
his way out of the first factory, and then there
was a second factory and a third factory, and they
were all about seven years or so. Because the factories
(03:31):
were they weren't outright closing, they were moving. I remember
one moved to the South where labor was cheaper. One
moved to Mexico. Eventually factory started moving to China and
Vietnam and Cambodia. And I grew up in a blue
collar neighborhood. Every dad on the block, I think there
(03:53):
was only one guy with a desk job. Everybody else
they were electricians, construction workers. Factory were all my friends dads.
So I grew up with this heavy blue collar perspective.
And then one of my early jobs in Almyra, New
York where I spent two and a half years doing radio.
(04:14):
Ken was there as well, and it's on a different
station and very blue collar town. But all the factories
had closed some years before I got there, and everybody
was stuck in the past. Everybody couldn't believe that all
the jobs had left. And this is true of a
lot of big cities, you know, in the Northeast into
the Midwest, the rust belt, right. I think Billy Joel's
(04:36):
song Allantown captured it beautifully. That was a perfect song
about what life used to be like for people and
what happened. If you don't know his song Allentown, listen
to it all right, and that's the whole story there.
I always thought that was one of his best songs
and conveying what the real life of people and everybody
(04:58):
was a victim of what the government had decided to
do and what industrial business leaders decided to do. And
what they decided to do was they were going to
send the jobs to other countries where labor was really cheap,
you know, dollar an hour kind of labor, and you
can get away with much crueler working conditions. I mean,
(05:22):
there was no picnic for my dad working in a hot,
steamy factory twelve hours a day, overnights, seven days, six
days a week.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
But boy, it was brutal in these countries.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
And you've heard like Apple manufacturers its phones a lot
in China, and there's a company there that Apple contracted with,
and people worked very long hours for very cheap wages,
and it was so oppressive that the company had to
put suicide nets at the top of the building. I
said this the other day. They said, no, that's not true. Yes,
(05:54):
go look it up. They had suicide nets because workers
couldn't take it anymore. China, you don't have a lot
of choice as to what you want to do. You
got to go with the program. And so they were
hurling themselves off buildings. And you know, like they have
suicide nets on the Golden State Bridge. And there are
(06:15):
people and most of them have degrees, you know, they
have PhDs and economics. They work for the government, they
work for Wall Street companies, and they will tell you
that free trade and free trade means, you know, the
jobs can go anywheres and they can make goods cheaper
and we all benefit because then we pay less for
(06:37):
the products that we like.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Right.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
That's the walm Art effect. Right, we can buy cheap clothing,
we can buy cheap electronics. So this is good for
all of us. And you know our GDP goes up.
This is what the economic statistical nerds will tell you. No, no, no,
you want free trade. Otherwise you lose, you know, two
percentage points off the GDP.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
There they.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
What they completely missed, totally missed, and they still don't
understand to this day, is yeah, on your spreadsheets, you
got a good deal there, right, you got more money
flowing in, more GDP.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Executives make more money. But the blue collar guys don't
have a job, and they're designed to work in factories.
They're designed to work with their hands. All the dads
in my neighborhood, that's what they were designed for. A
lot of the guys I grew up at. That's what
(07:37):
they were designed for. They can't do computer programming. That's
not the way the brains work. That's not their talents.
And so for those extra gross domestic product points that
the economists and government government geeks are so proud of,
a lot of people had their lives run because they
(07:59):
don't know what to do there's no job for them,
or they take a low wage job like you know,
flipping burgers or shaking fry baskets.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
It's not meaningful.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
You know, My dad at least at the end of
the day knew he was part of a manufacturing process
and the goods were packaged and then shipped out, and
there was a satisfaction in that.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
There was a pride in that.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
If you're in a service job or a retail job
or a make work job, not the same thing. Doesn't
pay much, can't raise a family on it. People always say, well,
why is it so hard to raise a family today?
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Why is life so difficult?
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Well, it's difficult because we gave away millions and millions
of manufacturing jobs. We lost tens of millions of manufacturing
jobs when we let China into the World Trade Organization.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
You know, for years they were blocked out.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
And then this is during the Clinton and Bush years,
they let China in and suddenly the likes of Apple
sent all their factories over to China. Oh, but you're
getting products cheaper, And I always think, are we I
don't know is Apple phones are well over one thousand dollars.
What it is is they're getting big profits, and I
(09:16):
don't criticize profits very often. I don't even know if
I'm criticizing him now. I'm just saying that there's a consequence.
If you want free trade and you want to let
you want to have everything manufactured out of the country
and ship it here where we buy it cheaper. If
that's what you want, it's going to cost. That's why
(09:39):
a lot of guys, our young guys are lost. They're
on drugs, they're on heroin, they drink too much. They
spend all their days either online or playing video games
because they can't do office work. They can't do computer work.
That's not their thing. And there were plentiful jobs years
(10:03):
ago for that kind of guy, and now there isn't anymore.
They're not college material, some of them are barely high
school material. And Trump what he says he wants to
do it. I had no idea if this is gonna
work or not. That might be a disaster. You might
have to reverse course in a month or two. Maybe
(10:26):
it'll be boom time. Nobody knows, and I wouldn't listen
to anybody who knows. There's so much bias out there.
You either have knee jerk Trump critics who hope he fails,
or you have these Trump cheerleaders and he can do
no wrong. And both both both groups are excruciating to
(10:49):
listen to. They're both full of it. They don't know
what's going to happen. They hope what's going to happen.
So why it's very hard actually to do this job, much
harder than it used to be, because I don't trust
anything I read, and I don't believe anything I hear.
I don't know, you know, I don't don't trust people's motivations.
I don't trust their partisanship. But I'll leave you with
(11:14):
this Wall Street Journal printed a chart, and I'm not
going to get deep into numbers, but China imports four
hundred and forty billion dollars worth of goods into this country.
(11:35):
We only export one hundred and forty billion, So China
imports three hundred billion more dollars worth of goods, and
that money goes back to China. It leaves American and
goes to China. There's a three hundred billion dollar trade
in balance in the European Union. It's about two hundred
(11:59):
and thirty five billion extra that we pay out to
European countries, then they pay to us for goods. Even
Mexico is one hundred and seventy billion. And I go
on and on with all the countries, but you get
the point. We don't make much, but we're the biggest
market to buy. We don't have jobs, especially for a
(12:21):
lot of younger guys who are not college educated. Why
do you think they're they're the strongest supporters of Trump,
he had said. Actually, they were playing clips on the
business channels today have Trump going back to the nineteen
eighties railing about how companies screw us over in trade,
and he campaigned every day, he talked about terriffs. He
(12:47):
said he was going to do this, and he did it.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Now. Whether it will work again, I don't know. Nobody does.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
But the purpose, if you believe him, is because we've
lost a ton of manufacturing. We pay way more to
these countries than they pay us for our goods. And
he thinks things are completely out of whack and that
this will go a long way to fixing it. And
(13:15):
there's also a lot of negotiating leverage going on. I
don't think these tariffs are going to remain this high.
I think the other countries are gonna sit down and say,
all right, let's work a deal. We'll lower our tariffs
on your US goods and you lower the tariffs on
our goods. So this is a story. I always told
(13:38):
you we had a three day rule. You wait three
days on a big story and see what the truth is.
This could be a three month rule, this could be
a one year rule. And the reason the stock market
crash today is nobody knows what's going to happen. So
when you don't know what the economy is going to
be like in the next few months or a year,
and you don't know how much profit that a company
(14:00):
is going to make, then what's the price of the stock.
What's it supposed to be? Well, when nobody knows a
lot of people, well a lot of Wall Street investor types,
they sell, They sell and say, you know what, let's
sit it out for a while, see what happens.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
That's what's going on today. All right, more coming up.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
John Cobelt Moistline is eighty seven seven, mois Steady six
eight seven seven Moist Stady six or that talk pack
feature on the iHeartRadio app coming just you know what's ahead.
After one point thirty, we're gonna have Mike Tubusky on
from ABC News. He's their technology reporter. Amazon is putting
in a last minute bid to buy TikTok.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
You want TikTok.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
Do? I?
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah, No, Well, I mean I don't. It's not my thing.
I don't care.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Right, you're not a twelve year old girl, I'm not. Yeah, Okay, Well,
Amazon is putting in a bid to buy it. You
know that that whole thing is still up in the air.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
And then after two o'clock, Alex Stone from ABC News
is going to talk about with all these tariffs going
into effect, big taxes on imports from other countries, what
consumer goods are going to go up in price? Stuff
you buy will shortly be noticeably more expensive.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
And we'll discuss that further. Uh.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
I spent a few minutes on Gavin Newsom. He did
a press conference today. It was it was in the
Central Valley, it was it was yesterday.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
I guess they have some kind of program career advancement
opportunities for Californians who were looking for good paying jobs,
whether they have a four year college degree or not,
you know, a lot of whatever. But the interesting part
was when reporters started asking him questions not on his topic,
(16:02):
after the after they went through their presentation, and uh,
there's a there's a reporter up in Sacramento, case r
A t v Ashley Zavala.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
She keeps showing up in the.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Clips that we use because she's one of the few
that is not a sycophant of Newsom. There are a
lot of Newsome sycophants in the media. There's a lot
of progressive reporters and producers and editors, and they treat
him very gently. They don't want to they don't want
to do anything to hurt the cause. But actually Zavala
(16:37):
is not playing that game. And uh, we're gonna play
a clip here because Newsom is still getting dogged. Uh
after that podcast that he did with the conservative activist
Charlie Clark Kirk where he agreed that having biological boys
and men play girls and women's sports in school was
(16:58):
deeply unfair, and he's kind of waffled all over the place.
And two Republicans, Kate Sanchez and Bill A. Sale, called
his bluff with two bills in the Assembly one that
would ban transgender biological men from playing in girls' sports
and the other would ban them from dressing in girls'
(17:19):
locker rooms, and the Democrats vetoed it. Newsom didn't do
anything to stop the Democrats vetoing it, and so people
are saying, well, you just said it's deeply unfair, so
why don't you change the law.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
So this is actually Zavalla from Casey r a t.
Speaker 5 (17:35):
V difficult to make that determination. I'm you know, I
spent an hour a week on this. The guy have
a conversation tomorrow with someone and there's a podcast question.
Conversation takes many different forms shapes. Sometimes what you expect
will be discussed. Sometimes things come up that are off
topic that become topical. But it's not an agenda setting effort.
(18:00):
I'm not trying to legislate from that prism.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Wait wait, stop there.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
So the question was about his podcast, right, and he goes,
it's not an agenda setting effort, but he gave an
opinion that is at odds with the legislation he just
signed a couple of years ago, and that's allowing the
transgenders to play girl sports. And then he says, I'm
not legislating from that prism. He could say I'm not
(18:31):
legislating from the podcast, but he had to use the
word prism. He's so so weird. He just can't talk normally,
and you could tell he's nervous. And one thing about him,
he is not good with question and answer things. He
gets nervous, he starts babbling his techno garble, and he
doesn't like being confronted. And you can see the podcast
(18:55):
he'll blurt things out and then regret that he blurted
it out. I'm sure he wished he never brought up
this whole transgender issue because nobody's leaving it alone.
Speaker 5 (19:04):
Continue PRISM using this platform. That's the work I do
as governor. The extent it crosses over. You talked to
an Ezra Kline and he's talking about this framework of
abundance and he's talking about litigation and SEQUA and NIPA
and Reagan and Nixon, and listen to how that crossover
around high speed rail and other things housing supply, and
(19:25):
that obviously crosses over quite nicely. The work we're doing
was highlighted. I appreciate Buffy Wicks and the twenty plus
bill she introduced was highlighted and underscored, and the conversation
that we had of I think her sort of renewed
enthusiasm of my enthusiasm in this space which has been
well established space as it relates to judicial review in
(19:45):
some of the forms we made of the course last
many years. So you know, I think component parts, but
I want to overread it because.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
I have so and so on. This is some new agenda.
Speaker 5 (19:55):
It's what I said it was going to be, which
is an opportunity to have conversations with people that I
agree with and disagree with, to have a kind of
conversations that I.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Haven't priced up.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Again, he came out of the podcast and he said,
the effects of the bill that he signed are deeply unfair.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Those are his words, he said, they're unfair.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
It's his bill that he signed allowing you know, transgender
biological men to play with girls. So if he signed
something deeply unfair, he's acknowledging it.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
But he won't.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
He won't rescind it and listen, he doesn't want to
address it, so he just starts babbling.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Play some more.
Speaker 5 (20:36):
To have a kind of conversations that I have in private,
but to make them public, to be even more transparent
in that process and content that big ideas come from
private conversations I have and they can be incorporated into policymaking.
I think it would be wonderful if those public conversations
generated an idea too as well. But that again is
(21:00):
the intention of the podcasting.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Is he getting paid yeah, this is yeah.
Speaker 5 (21:09):
No, And it's the exact same format as the prior one,
and we had all those fancy attorneys figure all that
out and it's all transparent on the seven hundred form
and all that. It's trains a dollar. In fact, this
has cost me money. But that's another conversation.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Well, he's doing it for iHeart, and no, he's not
getting paid by iHeart. That would create all kinds of
conflicts of interest. But because iHeart has news and talk
stations that have to cover him, so if he's a
paid employee, you could see why that would be a problem.
So maybe he is paid for I don't know, the
studio rental, the equipment, I don't know, But no, he's
(21:50):
not getting paid. This is a vehicle to start campaigning
for president. That's what he's doing. He's interviewing national political
figures from all idiology jeez to raise his because he's
not really well known other than as maybe as a
goof governor of California. He's not well known around the country.
You know, when he shows up in polls, his name
(22:11):
gets three percent. You know, he's he's he looms over
our life because we're so oppressed in this state.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
But outside of the borders, he's looked on as kind
of a clown.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
All right, more coming up, Deborah Mark Uh, oh wait,
I'm mistiezsh.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
You turn your mic off? Oh my god, I guess
I could have turned his micall. I guess you could have.
I'm sorry, I was paralyzed.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
You couldn't.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
No, No, I was a para. He don't comment on
my yawns.
Speaker 5 (22:42):
Again.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Amazon maybe buying TikTok. At least they put in a
bid Mike Debusky for maybe c News A love that story.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Coming up.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
You're listening to John Cobel's on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
You can follow us John Cobelt Radio on social media. Yeah,
we need less than the six hundred followers to hit
the magic twenty five thousand marks, So follow us at
John Cobelt Radio. April fifth, which is two days from
now was supposed to be the deadline that the Trump
administration had set for TikTok to be sold. TikTok is
(23:21):
old by a Chinese company called bike Dance, and there
are fears throughout the American government that bike Dance has
an elaborate spy network within TikTok and that's the reason
they came up with this app. And they're getting information
on about one hundred and thirty five million Americans use it.
(23:41):
So Chinese never said they're willing to sell it, but
Trump tried to get some buyers together, Amazon supposedly one
of them. Now, we're going to get the latest from
Mike Debuski from ABC News, the technology reporter on the
current situation. Mike, how are you.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
I'm doing well.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
On how are you? I'm all right.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
So there's a lot of people that use TikTok, not
just for entertainment but for business. Trump used it to
good effect for his campaign, and we're two days away
from the alleged deadline.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
So what's going on.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
Yeah, about one hundred and seventy million Americans use TikTok
every month, we think, and that includes millions of businesses. Right,
people think of TikTok as a place where, you know,
teenagers post videos of themselves dancing, but it's actually a
pretty big vector for commerce, people posting about their small
businesses and then getting some return as a result of that.
(24:33):
Amazon is the latest player to enter this fray, confirming
to ABC News that they have sent a letter to
the Trump administration expressing their interest in potentially acquiring TikTok.
It's kind of an interesting move from Amazon. We don't
really think of them as a social media company. Obviously,
they are dominant in the world of e commerce, but
TikTok also has the TikTok Shop, which is a pretty
(24:56):
robust sales platform of its own, so there is some
synergy between these two companies in that regard. However, as
you reference, TikTok is owned by a Chinese parent company,
and China's government has said that any sale of TikTok
that includes the algorithm, that is to say, the technology
that serves you videos is a no go. So essentially, Amazon,
(25:18):
if it were to acquire TikTok would have to build
an algorithm itself. It would have to start from square one,
so a lot of i's left to be dotted and
t's left to be crossed here. Amazon is by no
means the only company in contention. We also think that
the mobile tech company known as app Lovin has put
in a bid to acquire TikTok, as well as Oracle
(25:40):
or group of companies that include Oracles. So a lot
of attention on this as the final hours.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Tick down here. How much would this go for the company?
Great question.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
We don't really know. The general estimate is that this
could be in the world of one hundred billion dollars.
It's obviously a hugely value app that is relied upon
by billion and yeah, and and I mean you think
back of course to twenty twenty two when Elon Musk
acquired Twitter. He bought it for forty four billion dollars,
(26:12):
so a little bit less than half of that. Obviously
two kind of different companies there. But even still, we
really haven't seen a sale like this, you know, at
least on this scale. That sort of brings up another
problem here, which is that even if this rarefied group
of companies that could afford TikTok, Amazon, you know, Meta,
potentially Microsoft, a couple others, even if they were to
(26:35):
make a move.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
To acquire this app.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
You can imagine that regulators around the world, antitrust regulators
would want to take a close look at it because
it's just so you know, big, and so valuable. Now,
the interesting question here is whether the lack of an
algorithm in any potential sale will impact the value of TikTok. Right,
the algorithm is what makes TikTok TikTok. It's the engine
(26:58):
of the car, and if any company where to buy
it without that algorithm, you're buying a car without an engine.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Essentially, So it's not a stupid question.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
But how difficult is it to build an algorithm to
keep TikTok performing the way it currently performs for people?
Speaker 4 (27:16):
Well, theyre I'll give you two different answers. On the
one hand, it's really pretty easy to build an algorithm
that just serves you videos. It's much more difficult to
build an algorithm that's good to the degree that TikTok
is good. TikTok's algorithm is its special sauce. It's the
thing that keeps people coming back. It is what has
raised concerns among lawmakers and experts and others that TikTok
(27:38):
is addictive, particularly to younger people and it distinguishes itself
from other competitors in this space. In the US, right Meta,
which owns Facebook and Instagram. They have Instagram Reels, which
is basically a clone of TikTok. Google has YouTube Shorts,
which is much the same thing. Neither of those platforms
have really taken off to the same degree that TikTok.
(28:00):
That's the perception among people who use these apps is
that they're just not as good, Right, They're not as
good as showing me things that I like or things
that I'm interested in. Something that really makes TikTok different
is that it shows you things that you didn't realize
you were interested in.
Speaker 5 (28:16):
Right.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
It is able to make those connections in such a
way that it's interesting and compelling and potentially addictive to
some people. So in some ways, yeah TV for Amazon
to just kind of slap a crappy algorithm in there
and call it a day, But will that mean people,
you know, kind of evacuate the app and move over
to other platforms, or just drop the trend altogether of
(28:37):
vertical scrolling video.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
There's a lot of question.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
Marks around that.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
One thing I haven't heard explained the reason Trump has
been trying to find a buyer is that it seems
like everyone in government both parties think that this is
a massive spy operation that China is running under the
guise of a social media service. They has anybody ever
explained exactly how they're spying on people and what kind
(29:03):
of information they're collecting, Like why, because, I mean, why
are they is the administration reacting the whole government reacting
so harshly? What do they think the Chinese are doing?
What kind of information are they hoarding?
Speaker 4 (29:16):
So there's two sort of buckets of concern that lawmakers
have put forward with regards to TikTok. It's not that
TikTok is owned by the Chinese government by any stretch.
It's owned by a parent company that's headquartered in China.
The concern amoung lawmakers is that Chinese government could compel
that company to do one of two things. One to
spy on American users. If you have an app on
(29:38):
your phone, it's collecting some amount of data about you.
You either have to enter your email address, your phone number,
maybe location data. In some cases, that's valuable data, right,
That's valuable data to a US adversary, That's valuable data
to an advertiser. So there's a degree of that that
is at concern here, especially given how popular TikTok is here.
(29:59):
The other concern is that it could be used as
a vector by which to spread misinformation, right that the
China's government could compel ByteDance to put pro China videos
in people's fees and get that messaging in front of
eyeballs that would otherwise not see it. But the crucial
piece of this right now, John, is that despite the
fears that that lawmakers have said and have stated in
(30:21):
congressional testimony, they have not put forward any hard evidence.
There's no smoking gun here to say that China's government
is doing this right now. Right now, this is purely
in the realm of the hypothetical. But even still, since
we've been talking about batting TikTok for five years now,
it's clearly something that is not going away and something
that continues to be a talking point for lawmakers.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
All right, Mike, thanks good stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
I wanted detail of Mike Debuski, ABC News Technology reporter.
After two o'clock, Alex Stone's coming on. You've heard all
the screaming and moaning about the tariffs. What's going to
cost you specifically in your life. That's what Alex we'll
be talking about after two.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
John Cobel cho KFI AM six forty Live everywhere on
the iHeart Radio app. Eight seven seven Moist eighty six
is for the Moist Line and that's tomorrow eight seven
seven Moist eighty six, and also you can use the
talkback feature on the iHeart Radio app. Coming up after
two o'clock, Alex Stone, because the word of the day
(31:31):
is tariffs. How many times in your life have you
had a discussion about tariffs? Do you know what a
tariff is? Do you care?
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Well?
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Now that Trump has issued tariffs on many countries, and
the tariff is attacks on goods that are imported into
the US. That's going to cause price increases at least
for a time. I care you, I care? Oh, I
imagine a lot of the clothing you buy. Yeah, yeah,
(32:02):
I was trying to think, like, I don't think, I
think scale all the vegan food you eat, I don't
think it's going to be affected, but probably so. Anyway,
that was that's coming up after two o'clock and we'll
find out. We'll see if anything effect is going to
affect your life. I read you yesterday we talked about
(32:23):
how there was a book on Joe Biden and how
senile he was, and they interviewed for this book his
his chief of staff Ron Klain, who admitted that Biden
was completely out of it in the weeks leading up
to the famous debate. Two weeks they tried to train him.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
He didn't one thing.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
I remember, he didn't understand his own argument about inflation.
Like they knew inflation was going to be a top issue,
that Trump was going to come after him hard, that
the moderators were going to question him on inflation, and
so you know, how.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Would they do.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
They got to construct the defense, an explanation to spin
to make it seem like the inflation wasn't really that bad,
it didn't last that long.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
But you know, there were reasons beyond his control.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Whatever the dance was, he couldn't figure it out, Like
he didn't grasp what it is he's supposed to say.
They're trying to feed him lines and he wasn't able
to focus. He'd get tired very quickly. After about twenty minutes,
he'd want to go take a nap, and he'd wander
outside and just stare and they knew, they knew it
(33:39):
was going to be a disaster, which cracks me up
because they all went on television afterwards, including Gavin news
to remember, and they went on afterwards and they said, well,
you know, it wasn't really that bad. I thought he
did pretty good. You know, everybody has an off night.
Bab blah blah. They knew he was senile two weeks beforehand.
They knew the debate was going to be a.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
Disaster, wasn't Kamala Harris who said he run circles around her?
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Basically yes, yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean the tremendous
lies that these people told. And they're still in office,
or they still want to be in office, they're still
in the public light. We played a Newsom clip before
Newsom went around. He was one of the strongest defenders
of Biden. After the debate, it's like, buddy, you led
(34:22):
your ass off. Not that anybody believed him anyway. Here's
a second book that's also out. Jonathan Allen wrote the book,
and he says that Barack Obama did not want Kamala
Harris on the ticket, that he was behind the scenes
(34:44):
working against Kamala being put on the ticket to replace Biden.
Here's what Jonathan Allen said on MSNBC. President Obama did
not think that Joe Biden should continue. He also didn't
Wantamala Harris to be the replacement. He didn't think she
was the best choice, and he worked behind the scenes
(35:05):
for a long time to have a mini primary or
an open convention, or a many primary leading to an
open convention. He did not have faith in her ability
to win the election, but that he went around campaigning
for her about how wonderful she is.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Does anybody tell the truth? Any politician tell the truth?
Speaker 2 (35:25):
No Ah, what a bunch of liars. All these people
should not be allowed in government ever. Again, the whole
lot of them. We don't have to worry about Biden
trying to crawl back in, but if you're voting for
Kamala Harris, you really need to have your head examined.
First of all, I think she's stoned bunch of the time.
That's why she makes no sense. Somebody ought to do
a drug test next time she appears in public. Obama
(35:50):
was not even willing to endorse Harris on the day
Biden dropped out. Remember Biden went right away and said, okay,
he endorses Kamala. He had set up a call with
the South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, and Clyburn, in discussing
(36:12):
with Obama, realized he wants to try to get me
to endorse this open convention idea, which a lot of
people didn't want to do because they thought it would
end up being a disaster. And one more thing, On
the day of the debate that Harris had with Trump,
Biden called Harris up and reminded her that she has
(36:33):
to stay loyal, that there's going to be should be
no daylight between her and the Biden record. He didn't
want even an indirect criticism of his term, and stupidly
she went along with that. If you remember, she never
issued a single criticism. When she was asked on the
(36:53):
view of all places, what would you do differently, she said,
I can't really think of anything, and it's because Joe
ordered her to and she listened to him. I hope
that crowd never ever shows up again running for anything.
(37:14):
Deborah Mark is live in the KFI twenty four hour News. Hey,
you've been listening to the John Cobalt Show podcast. You
can always hear the show live on KFI Am six
forty from one to four pm every Monday through Friday,
and of course, anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
Can't. I am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobelt podcast on the iHeartRadio
app John Cobelt's Show. Good that you're here. If you
like listening, We're on every day from one until four o'clock.
If you miss anything, you can pick it up on
the podcast John Cobelt's Show on demand. It's same as
the radio show, and you can listen to that anytime
(00:24):
after four o'clock. What has crowded out just about all
other news coverage today, no matter what media outlet you
watch or listen to or read, is Trump's tariff program
and the effects it's going to have on the US economy,
your life, the world.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
And it is.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
It's a full blown hysteria right now, absolute hysteria. And
the thing is, I was just thinking about this right
before the start of the show. I'm not sure I've
ever had a private conversation where the other person used
the word tariff like it's one of those words you
might see in a business article, you might hear on
(01:10):
an odd business report, if you even watch those kind
of things. It's just not something that people concern themselves with.
They don't know a lot about. And now that we
have this explosive event with the Trump charging high tariffs
on all these other countries. Everybody's supposed to have an opinion.
(01:30):
Everybody is supposed to support it or be against it.
And the truth is, nobody knows what's going to happen
at all, and most people probably don't understand what this
is anyway. The only thing they want to know is
it's going to drive up prices, because that's certainly the fear.
A lot of people are expecting it who analyze these things,
(01:52):
and what's the reason for this. So we're going to
try to go through the basics here. A tariff is
a tax, and the tax is paid on the importation
of goods coming from other countries, and we charge tariffs.
Other countries charge tariffs on our goods, but other there's
(02:18):
some countries that tax our goods a lot more than
we tax theirs, and we've had a trade imbalance for
decades and decades. We buy more stuff from foreign countries
than they buy from us. We buy a lot more stuff,
especially manufactured goods, and over the years because of that,
(02:44):
a lot of factories have closed. It's a cliche to
say we don't make much anymore, and we don't. I
lived this because my dad was a factory worker after
he came from Poland. The joke in the family was
every seven years is fact closed and he was out
of work. And it's true three times in a row
in my lifetime growing up, his factory closed and he
(03:09):
finally moved on to a fourth factory and he was
able to keep that job for I guess about eighteen years.
But about the time I was born, he was on
his way out of the first factory, and then there
was a second factory and a third factory, and they
were all about seven years or so. Because the factories
(03:31):
were they weren't outright closing, they were moving. I remember
one moved to the South where labor was cheaper. One
moved to Mexico. Eventually factory started moving to China and
Vietnam and Cambodia. And I grew up in a blue
collar neighborhood. Every dad on the block, I think there
(03:53):
was only one guy with a desk job. Everybody else
they were electricians, construction workers. Factory were all my friends dads.
So I grew up with this heavy blue collar perspective.
And then one of my early jobs in Almyra, New
York where I spent two and a half years doing radio.
(04:14):
Ken was there as well, and it's on a different
station and very blue collar town. But all the factories
had closed some years before I got there, and everybody
was stuck in the past. Everybody couldn't believe that all
the jobs had left. And this is true of a
lot of big cities, you know, in the Northeast into
the Midwest, the rust belt, right. I think Billy Joel's
(04:36):
song Allantown captured it beautifully. That was a perfect song
about what life used to be like for people and
what happened. If you don't know his song Allentown, listen
to it all right, and that's the whole story there.
I always thought that was one of his best songs
and conveying what the real life of people and everybody
(04:58):
was a victim of what the government had decided to
do and what industrial business leaders decided to do. And
what they decided to do was they were going to
send the jobs to other countries where labor was really cheap,
you know, dollar an hour kind of labor, and you
can get away with much crueler working conditions. I mean,
(05:22):
there was no picnic for my dad working in a hot,
steamy factory twelve hours a day, overnights, seven days, six
days a week.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
But boy, it was brutal in these countries.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
And you've heard like Apple manufacturers its phones a lot
in China, and there's a company there that Apple contracted with,
and people worked very long hours for very cheap wages,
and it was so oppressive that the company had to
put suicide nets at the top of the building. I
said this the other day. They said, no, that's not true. Yes,
(05:54):
go look it up. They had suicide nets because workers
couldn't take it anymore. China, you don't have a lot
of choice as to what you want to do. You
got to go with the program. And so they were
hurling themselves off buildings. And you know, like they have
suicide nets on the Golden State Bridge. And there are
(06:15):
people and most of them have degrees, you know, they
have PhDs and economics. They work for the government, they
work for Wall Street companies, and they will tell you
that free trade and free trade means, you know, the
jobs can go anywheres and they can make goods cheaper
and we all benefit because then we pay less for
(06:37):
the products that we like.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Right.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
That's the walm Art effect. Right, we can buy cheap clothing,
we can buy cheap electronics. So this is good for
all of us. And you know our GDP goes up.
This is what the economic statistical nerds will tell you. No, no, no,
you want free trade. Otherwise you lose, you know, two
percentage points off the GDP.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
There they.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
What they completely missed, totally missed, and they still don't
understand to this day, is yeah, on your spreadsheets, you
got a good deal there, right, you got more money
flowing in, more GDP.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Blah blah blah.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Executives make more money. But the blue collar guys don't
have a job, and they're designed to work in factories.
They're designed to work with their hands. All the dads
in my neighborhood, that's what they were designed for. A
lot of the guys I grew up at. That's what
(07:37):
they were designed for. They can't do computer programming. That's
not the way the brains work. That's not their talents.
And so for those extra gross domestic product points that
the economists and government government geeks are so proud of,
a lot of people had their lives run because they
(07:59):
don't know what to do there's no job for them,
or they take a low wage job like you know,
flipping burgers or shaking fry baskets.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
It's not meaningful.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
You know, My dad at least at the end of
the day knew he was part of a manufacturing process
and the goods were packaged and then shipped out, and
there was a satisfaction in that.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
There was a pride in that.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
If you're in a service job or a retail job
or a make work job, not the same thing. Doesn't
pay much, can't raise a family on it. People always say, well,
why is it so hard to raise a family today?
Speaker 1 (08:34):
Why is life so difficult?
Speaker 2 (08:36):
Well, it's difficult because we gave away millions and millions
of manufacturing jobs. We lost tens of millions of manufacturing
jobs when we let China into the World Trade Organization.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
You know, for years they were blocked out.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
And then this is during the Clinton and Bush years,
they let China in and suddenly the likes of Apple
sent all their factories over to China. Oh, but you're
getting products cheaper, And I always think, are we I
don't know is Apple phones are well over one thousand dollars.
What it is is they're getting big profits, and I
(09:16):
don't criticize profits very often. I don't even know if
I'm criticizing him now. I'm just saying that there's a consequence.
If you want free trade and you want to let
you want to have everything manufactured out of the country
and ship it here where we buy it cheaper. If
that's what you want, it's going to cost. That's why
(09:39):
a lot of guys, our young guys are lost. They're
on drugs, they're on heroin, they drink too much. They
spend all their days either online or playing video games
because they can't do office work. They can't do computer work.
That's not their thing. And there were plentiful jobs years
(10:03):
ago for that kind of guy, and now there isn't anymore.
They're not college material, some of them are barely high
school material. And Trump what he says he wants to
do it. I had no idea if this is gonna
work or not. That might be a disaster. You might
have to reverse course in a month or two. Maybe
(10:26):
it'll be boom time. Nobody knows, and I wouldn't listen
to anybody who knows. There's so much bias out there.
You either have knee jerk Trump critics who hope he fails,
or you have these Trump cheerleaders and he can do
no wrong. And both both both groups are excruciating to
(10:49):
listen to. They're both full of it. They don't know
what's going to happen. They hope what's going to happen.
So why it's very hard actually to do this job, much
harder than it used to be, because I don't trust
anything I read, and I don't believe anything I hear.
I don't know, you know, I don't don't trust people's motivations.
I don't trust their partisanship. But I'll leave you with
(11:14):
this Wall Street Journal printed a chart, and I'm not
going to get deep into numbers, but China imports four
hundred and forty billion dollars worth of goods into this country.
(11:35):
We only export one hundred and forty billion, So China
imports three hundred billion more dollars worth of goods, and
that money goes back to China. It leaves American and
goes to China. There's a three hundred billion dollar trade
in balance in the European Union. It's about two hundred
(11:59):
and thirty five billion extra that we pay out to
European countries, then they pay to us for goods. Even
Mexico is one hundred and seventy billion. And I go
on and on with all the countries, but you get
the point. We don't make much, but we're the biggest
market to buy. We don't have jobs, especially for a
(12:21):
lot of younger guys who are not college educated. Why
do you think they're they're the strongest supporters of Trump,
he had said. Actually, they were playing clips on the
business channels today have Trump going back to the nineteen
eighties railing about how companies screw us over in trade,
and he campaigned every day, he talked about terriffs. He
(12:47):
said he was going to do this, and he did it.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Now. Whether it will work again, I don't know. Nobody does.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
But the purpose, if you believe him, is because we've
lost a ton of manufacturing. We pay way more to
these countries than they pay us for our goods. And
he thinks things are completely out of whack and that
this will go a long way to fixing it. And
(13:15):
there's also a lot of negotiating leverage going on. I
don't think these tariffs are going to remain this high.
I think the other countries are gonna sit down and say,
all right, let's work a deal. We'll lower our tariffs
on your US goods and you lower the tariffs on
our goods. So this is a story. I always told
(13:38):
you we had a three day rule. You wait three
days on a big story and see what the truth is.
This could be a three month rule, this could be
a one year rule. And the reason the stock market
crash today is nobody knows what's going to happen. So
when you don't know what the economy is going to
be like in the next few months or a year,
and you don't know how much profit that a company
(14:00):
is going to make, then what's the price of the stock.
What's it supposed to be? Well, when nobody knows a
lot of people, well a lot of Wall Street investor types,
they sell, They sell and say, you know what, let's
sit it out for a while, see what happens.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
That's what's going on today. All right, more coming up.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
John Cobelt Moistline is eighty seven seven, mois Steady six
eight seven seven Moist Stady six or that talk pack
feature on the iHeartRadio app coming just you know what's ahead.
After one point thirty, we're gonna have Mike Tubusky on
from ABC News. He's their technology reporter. Amazon is putting
in a last minute bid to buy TikTok.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
You want TikTok.
Speaker 4 (14:48):
Do? I?
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah, No, Well, I mean I don't. It's not my thing.
I don't care.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
Right, you're not a twelve year old girl, I'm not. Yeah, Okay, Well,
Amazon is putting in a bid to buy it. You
know that that whole thing is still up in the air.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
And then after two o'clock, Alex Stone from ABC News
is going to talk about with all these tariffs going
into effect, big taxes on imports from other countries, what
consumer goods are going to go up in price? Stuff
you buy will shortly be noticeably more expensive.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
And we'll discuss that further. Uh.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
I spent a few minutes on Gavin Newsom. He did
a press conference today. It was it was in the
Central Valley, it was it was yesterday.
Speaker 4 (15:39):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
I guess they have some kind of program career advancement
opportunities for Californians who were looking for good paying jobs,
whether they have a four year college degree or not,
you know, a lot of whatever. But the interesting part
was when reporters started asking him questions not on his topic,
(16:02):
after the after they went through their presentation, and uh,
there's a there's a reporter up in Sacramento, case r
A t v Ashley Zavala.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
She keeps showing up in the.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Clips that we use because she's one of the few
that is not a sycophant of Newsom. There are a
lot of Newsome sycophants in the media. There's a lot
of progressive reporters and producers and editors, and they treat
him very gently. They don't want to they don't want
to do anything to hurt the cause. But actually Zavala
(16:37):
is not playing that game. And uh, we're gonna play
a clip here because Newsom is still getting dogged. Uh
after that podcast that he did with the conservative activist
Charlie Clark Kirk where he agreed that having biological boys
and men play girls and women's sports in school was
(16:58):
deeply unfair, and he's kind of waffled all over the place.
And two Republicans, Kate Sanchez and Bill A. Sale, called
his bluff with two bills in the Assembly one that
would ban transgender biological men from playing in girls' sports
and the other would ban them from dressing in girls'
(17:19):
locker rooms, and the Democrats vetoed it. Newsom didn't do
anything to stop the Democrats vetoing it, and so people
are saying, well, you just said it's deeply unfair, so
why don't you change the law.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
So this is actually Zavalla from Casey r a t.
Speaker 5 (17:35):
V difficult to make that determination. I'm you know, I
spent an hour a week on this. The guy have
a conversation tomorrow with someone and there's a podcast question.
Conversation takes many different forms shapes. Sometimes what you expect
will be discussed. Sometimes things come up that are off
topic that become topical. But it's not an agenda setting effort.
(18:00):
I'm not trying to legislate from that prism.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Wait wait, stop there.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
So the question was about his podcast, right, and he goes,
it's not an agenda setting effort, but he gave an
opinion that is at odds with the legislation he just
signed a couple of years ago, and that's allowing the
transgenders to play girl sports. And then he says, I'm
not legislating from that prism. He could say I'm not
(18:31):
legislating from the podcast, but he had to use the
word prism. He's so so weird. He just can't talk normally,
and you could tell he's nervous. And one thing about him,
he is not good with question and answer things. He
gets nervous, he starts babbling his techno garble, and he
doesn't like being confronted. And you can see the podcast
(18:55):
he'll blurt things out and then regret that he blurted
it out. I'm sure he wished he never brought up
this whole transgender issue because nobody's leaving it alone.
Speaker 5 (19:04):
Continue PRISM using this platform. That's the work I do
as governor. The extent it crosses over. You talked to
an Ezra Kline and he's talking about this framework of
abundance and he's talking about litigation and SEQUA and NIPA
and Reagan and Nixon, and listen to how that crossover
around high speed rail and other things housing supply, and
(19:25):
that obviously crosses over quite nicely. The work we're doing
was highlighted. I appreciate Buffy Wicks and the twenty plus
bill she introduced was highlighted and underscored, and the conversation
that we had of I think her sort of renewed
enthusiasm of my enthusiasm in this space which has been
well established space as it relates to judicial review in
(19:45):
some of the forms we made of the course last
many years. So you know, I think component parts, but
I want to overread it because.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
I have so and so on. This is some new agenda.
Speaker 5 (19:55):
It's what I said it was going to be, which
is an opportunity to have conversations with people that I
agree with and disagree with, to have a kind of
conversations that I.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Haven't priced up.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Again, he came out of the podcast and he said,
the effects of the bill that he signed are deeply unfair.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Those are his words, he said, they're unfair.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
It's his bill that he signed allowing you know, transgender
biological men to play with girls. So if he signed
something deeply unfair, he's acknowledging it.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
But he won't.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
He won't rescind it and listen, he doesn't want to
address it, so he just starts babbling.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Play some more.
Speaker 5 (20:36):
To have a kind of conversations that I have in private,
but to make them public, to be even more transparent
in that process and content that big ideas come from
private conversations I have and they can be incorporated into policymaking.
I think it would be wonderful if those public conversations
generated an idea too as well. But that again is
(21:00):
the intention of the podcasting.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Is he getting paid yeah, this is yeah.
Speaker 5 (21:09):
No, And it's the exact same format as the prior one,
and we had all those fancy attorneys figure all that
out and it's all transparent on the seven hundred form
and all that. It's trains a dollar. In fact, this
has cost me money. But that's another conversation.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Well, he's doing it for iHeart, and no, he's not
getting paid by iHeart. That would create all kinds of
conflicts of interest. But because iHeart has news and talk
stations that have to cover him, so if he's a
paid employee, you could see why that would be a problem.
So maybe he is paid for I don't know, the
studio rental, the equipment, I don't know, But no, he's
(21:50):
not getting paid. This is a vehicle to start campaigning
for president. That's what he's doing. He's interviewing national political
figures from all idiology jeez to raise his because he's
not really well known other than as maybe as a
goof governor of California. He's not well known around the country.
You know, when he shows up in polls, his name
(22:11):
gets three percent. You know, he's he's he looms over
our life because we're so oppressed in this state.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
But outside of the borders, he's looked on as kind
of a clown.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
All right, more coming up, Deborah Mark Uh, oh wait,
I'm mistiezsh.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
You turn your mic off? Oh my god, I guess
I could have turned his micall. I guess you could have.
I'm sorry, I was paralyzed.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
You couldn't.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
No, No, I was a para. He don't comment on
my yawns.
Speaker 5 (22:42):
Again.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
Amazon maybe buying TikTok. At least they put in a
bid Mike Debusky for maybe c News A love that story.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Coming up.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
You're listening to John Cobel's on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
You can follow us John Cobelt Radio on social media. Yeah,
we need less than the six hundred followers to hit
the magic twenty five thousand marks, So follow us at
John Cobelt Radio. April fifth, which is two days from
now was supposed to be the deadline that the Trump
administration had set for TikTok to be sold. TikTok is
(23:21):
old by a Chinese company called bike Dance, and there
are fears throughout the American government that bike Dance has
an elaborate spy network within TikTok and that's the reason
they came up with this app. And they're getting information
on about one hundred and thirty five million Americans use it.
(23:41):
So Chinese never said they're willing to sell it, but
Trump tried to get some buyers together, Amazon supposedly one
of them. Now, we're going to get the latest from
Mike Debuski from ABC News, the technology reporter on the
current situation. Mike, how are you.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
I'm doing well.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
On how are you? I'm all right.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
So there's a lot of people that use TikTok, not
just for entertainment but for business. Trump used it to
good effect for his campaign, and we're two days away
from the alleged deadline.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
So what's going on.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
Yeah, about one hundred and seventy million Americans use TikTok
every month, we think, and that includes millions of businesses. Right,
people think of TikTok as a place where, you know,
teenagers post videos of themselves dancing, but it's actually a
pretty big vector for commerce, people posting about their small
businesses and then getting some return as a result of that.
(24:33):
Amazon is the latest player to enter this fray, confirming
to ABC News that they have sent a letter to
the Trump administration expressing their interest in potentially acquiring TikTok.
It's kind of an interesting move from Amazon. We don't
really think of them as a social media company. Obviously,
they are dominant in the world of e commerce, but
TikTok also has the TikTok Shop, which is a pretty
(24:56):
robust sales platform of its own, so there is some
synergy between these two companies in that regard. However, as
you reference, TikTok is owned by a Chinese parent company,
and China's government has said that any sale of TikTok
that includes the algorithm, that is to say, the technology
that serves you videos is a no go. So essentially, Amazon,
(25:18):
if it were to acquire TikTok would have to build
an algorithm itself. It would have to start from square one,
so a lot of i's left to be dotted and
t's left to be crossed here. Amazon is by no
means the only company in contention. We also think that
the mobile tech company known as app Lovin has put
in a bid to acquire TikTok, as well as Oracle
(25:40):
or group of companies that include Oracles. So a lot
of attention on this as the final hours.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
Tick down here. How much would this go for the company?
Great question.
Speaker 4 (25:49):
We don't really know. The general estimate is that this
could be in the world of one hundred billion dollars.
It's obviously a hugely value app that is relied upon
by billion and yeah, and and I mean you think
back of course to twenty twenty two when Elon Musk
acquired Twitter. He bought it for forty four billion dollars,
(26:12):
so a little bit less than half of that. Obviously
two kind of different companies there. But even still, we
really haven't seen a sale like this, you know, at
least on this scale. That sort of brings up another
problem here, which is that even if this rarefied group
of companies that could afford TikTok, Amazon, you know, Meta,
potentially Microsoft, a couple others, even if they were to
(26:35):
make a move.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
To acquire this app.
Speaker 4 (26:37):
You can imagine that regulators around the world, antitrust regulators
would want to take a close look at it because
it's just so you know, big, and so valuable. Now,
the interesting question here is whether the lack of an
algorithm in any potential sale will impact the value of TikTok. Right,
the algorithm is what makes TikTok TikTok. It's the engine
(26:58):
of the car, and if any company where to buy
it without that algorithm, you're buying a car without an engine.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Essentially, So it's not a stupid question.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
But how difficult is it to build an algorithm to
keep TikTok performing the way it currently performs for people?
Speaker 4 (27:16):
Well, theyre I'll give you two different answers. On the
one hand, it's really pretty easy to build an algorithm
that just serves you videos. It's much more difficult to
build an algorithm that's good to the degree that TikTok
is good. TikTok's algorithm is its special sauce. It's the
thing that keeps people coming back. It is what has
raised concerns among lawmakers and experts and others that TikTok
(27:38):
is addictive, particularly to younger people and it distinguishes itself
from other competitors in this space. In the US, right Meta,
which owns Facebook and Instagram. They have Instagram Reels, which
is basically a clone of TikTok. Google has YouTube Shorts,
which is much the same thing. Neither of those platforms
have really taken off to the same degree that TikTok.
(28:00):
That's the perception among people who use these apps is
that they're just not as good, Right, They're not as
good as showing me things that I like or things
that I'm interested in. Something that really makes TikTok different
is that it shows you things that you didn't realize
you were interested in.
Speaker 5 (28:16):
Right.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
It is able to make those connections in such a
way that it's interesting and compelling and potentially addictive to
some people. So in some ways, yeah TV for Amazon
to just kind of slap a crappy algorithm in there
and call it a day, But will that mean people,
you know, kind of evacuate the app and move over
to other platforms, or just drop the trend altogether of
(28:37):
vertical scrolling video.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
There's a lot of question.
Speaker 4 (28:40):
Marks around that.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
One thing I haven't heard explained the reason Trump has
been trying to find a buyer is that it seems
like everyone in government both parties think that this is
a massive spy operation that China is running under the
guise of a social media service. They has anybody ever
explained exactly how they're spying on people and what kind
(29:03):
of information they're collecting, Like why, because, I mean, why
are they is the administration reacting the whole government reacting
so harshly? What do they think the Chinese are doing?
What kind of information are they hoarding?
Speaker 4 (29:16):
So there's two sort of buckets of concern that lawmakers
have put forward with regards to TikTok. It's not that
TikTok is owned by the Chinese government by any stretch.
It's owned by a parent company that's headquartered in China.
The concern amoung lawmakers is that Chinese government could compel
that company to do one of two things. One to
spy on American users. If you have an app on
(29:38):
your phone, it's collecting some amount of data about you.
You either have to enter your email address, your phone number,
maybe location data. In some cases, that's valuable data, right,
That's valuable data to a US adversary, That's valuable data
to an advertiser. So there's a degree of that that
is at concern here, especially given how popular TikTok is here.
(29:59):
The other concern is that it could be used as
a vector by which to spread misinformation, right that the
China's government could compel ByteDance to put pro China videos
in people's fees and get that messaging in front of
eyeballs that would otherwise not see it. But the crucial
piece of this right now, John, is that despite the
fears that that lawmakers have said and have stated in
(30:21):
congressional testimony, they have not put forward any hard evidence.
There's no smoking gun here to say that China's government
is doing this right now. Right now, this is purely
in the realm of the hypothetical. But even still, since
we've been talking about batting TikTok for five years now,
it's clearly something that is not going away and something
that continues to be a talking point for lawmakers.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
All right, Mike, thanks good stuff.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
I wanted detail of Mike Debuski, ABC News Technology reporter.
After two o'clock, Alex Stone's coming on. You've heard all
the screaming and moaning about the tariffs. What's going to
cost you specifically in your life. That's what Alex we'll
be talking about after two.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
John Cobel cho KFI AM six forty Live everywhere on
the iHeart Radio app. Eight seven seven Moist eighty six
is for the Moist Line and that's tomorrow eight seven
seven Moist eighty six, and also you can use the
talkback feature on the iHeart Radio app. Coming up after
two o'clock, Alex Stone, because the word of the day
(31:31):
is tariffs. How many times in your life have you
had a discussion about tariffs? Do you know what a
tariff is? Do you care?
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Well?
Speaker 2 (31:39):
Now that Trump has issued tariffs on many countries, and
the tariff is attacks on goods that are imported into
the US. That's going to cause price increases at least
for a time. I care you, I care? Oh, I
imagine a lot of the clothing you buy. Yeah, yeah,
(32:02):
I was trying to think, like, I don't think, I
think scale all the vegan food you eat, I don't
think it's going to be affected, but probably so. Anyway,
that was that's coming up after two o'clock and we'll
find out. We'll see if anything effect is going to
affect your life. I read you yesterday we talked about
(32:23):
how there was a book on Joe Biden and how
senile he was, and they interviewed for this book his
his chief of staff Ron Klain, who admitted that Biden
was completely out of it in the weeks leading up
to the famous debate. Two weeks they tried to train him.
Speaker 1 (32:48):
He didn't one thing.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
I remember, he didn't understand his own argument about inflation.
Like they knew inflation was going to be a top issue,
that Trump was going to come after him hard, that
the moderators were going to question him on inflation, and
so you know, how.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Would they do.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
They got to construct the defense, an explanation to spin
to make it seem like the inflation wasn't really that bad,
it didn't last that long.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
But you know, there were reasons beyond his control.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Whatever the dance was, he couldn't figure it out, Like
he didn't grasp what it is he's supposed to say.
They're trying to feed him lines and he wasn't able
to focus. He'd get tired very quickly. After about twenty minutes,
he'd want to go take a nap, and he'd wander
outside and just stare and they knew, they knew it
(33:39):
was going to be a disaster, which cracks me up
because they all went on television afterwards, including Gavin news
to remember, and they went on afterwards and they said, well,
you know, it wasn't really that bad. I thought he
did pretty good. You know, everybody has an off night.
Bab blah blah. They knew he was senile two weeks beforehand.
They knew the debate was going to be a.
Speaker 4 (33:57):
Disaster, wasn't Kamala Harris who said he run circles around her?
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Basically yes, yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean the tremendous
lies that these people told. And they're still in office,
or they still want to be in office, they're still
in the public light. We played a Newsom clip before
Newsom went around. He was one of the strongest defenders
of Biden. After the debate, it's like, buddy, you led
(34:22):
your ass off. Not that anybody believed him anyway. Here's
a second book that's also out. Jonathan Allen wrote the book,
and he says that Barack Obama did not want Kamala
Harris on the ticket, that he was behind the scenes
(34:44):
working against Kamala being put on the ticket to replace Biden.
Here's what Jonathan Allen said on MSNBC. President Obama did
not think that Joe Biden should continue. He also didn't
Wantamala Harris to be the replacement. He didn't think she
was the best choice, and he worked behind the scenes
(35:05):
for a long time to have a mini primary or
an open convention, or a many primary leading to an
open convention. He did not have faith in her ability
to win the election, but that he went around campaigning
for her about how wonderful she is.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
Does anybody tell the truth? Any politician tell the truth?
Speaker 2 (35:25):
No Ah, what a bunch of liars. All these people
should not be allowed in government ever. Again, the whole
lot of them. We don't have to worry about Biden
trying to crawl back in, but if you're voting for
Kamala Harris, you really need to have your head examined.
First of all, I think she's stoned bunch of the time.
That's why she makes no sense. Somebody ought to do
a drug test next time she appears in public. Obama
(35:50):
was not even willing to endorse Harris on the day
Biden dropped out. Remember Biden went right away and said, okay,
he endorses Kamala. He had set up a call with
the South Carolina Congressman James Clyburn, and Clyburn, in discussing
(36:12):
with Obama, realized he wants to try to get me
to endorse this open convention idea, which a lot of
people didn't want to do because they thought it would
end up being a disaster. And one more thing, On
the day of the debate that Harris had with Trump,
Biden called Harris up and reminded her that she has
(36:33):
to stay loyal, that there's going to be should be
no daylight between her and the Biden record. He didn't
want even an indirect criticism of his term, and stupidly
she went along with that. If you remember, she never
issued a single criticism. When she was asked on the
(36:53):
view of all places, what would you do differently, she said,
I can't really think of anything, and it's because Joe
ordered her to and she listened to him. I hope
that crowd never ever shows up again running for anything.
(37:14):
Deborah Mark is live in the KFI twenty four hour News. 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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