February 18, 2025 • 25 mins
KFI’s and KTLA’s Rich Demuro joins the show to talk the latest on tech. / A discussion about what the American diet would really look like without foods from other Countries. / How loaded fries and large sodas helped one restaurant chain beat inflation blues.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to KFI AM six forty the Bill Handles
show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. We are covering
the stories well. Coming up at eight thirty and this
is news. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco has announced his
candidacy for California governor hardliner, and we'll talk about that
and this air crash yesterday at Toronto International Airport in
(00:26):
which a regional jet, a Canadian jet that had eighty
people on it, came in to land, flipped over, hit
the runway, flipped over. Everybody survived, I mean, a miracle
beyond miracles.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Now it's Tech Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Usually Richard Murrow's with us, but Mike Dubuski, ABC News
Technology reporter has been kind enough to join us, which
he does occasionally.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Mike, thank you for taking the time for joining us.
Quick question. Oh and this is a good one because
this is one of my favorite topics. What is a
or the Tesla takedown movement?
Speaker 3 (01:05):
So this is a movement that we've seen crop up
in recent days at various Tesla locations, So Tesla stores,
Tesla service centers, charging locations, that type of thing. It's
a protest movement at the end of the day, one
that was founded online primarily on one of the major
X competitors out there, which is Blue Sky. And they say,
(01:26):
these protesters that they want to hit Elon Musk where
it hurts, which is Tesla, that is his most prominent
and one of his most successful businesses. And these are
protesters and demonstrators that are dissatisfied with Elon Musk's recent
right word shift in his politics and more specifically his
actions at the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE. Recently
(01:49):
instructed the federal government to layoff thousands of workers and
has recently gained access to troves of information coming under
a lot of criticism with regards to transparency and that
type of thing. These protesters say that Elon Musk amounts
to an unelected billionaire wreaking havoc on our government. And
if you go to organizers' websites, they say that they
want owners to sell their Tesla's, dump their stock, and
(02:12):
join the picket lines because hurting Tesla is stopping Musk,
and stopping Musk will help save lives and democracy.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Okay, so this is a political movement.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
It is not a movement that says Tesla's are kind
of junkie and we're all going to get together and
get rid of them.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
And as a quick aside, I bought a.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Tesla and it lasted two weeks.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Two weeks.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
I've been driving a BMW for twenty years and I
caved in and bought a Tesla because I wanted an
EV And I was thrilled because a week a week
after I bought it must set. Oh, there's a twenty
percent discount now, And it dropped twenty percent that minute,
and I sold it at sixteen thousand dollars loss because
(03:00):
I didn't think it was a very good car. What
is going on with that?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Is it? Do people realize or do people believe?
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Now it's act it was the only one out there
and now there's a lot of competitors.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
What's going on with the technology.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
The history of Tesla I find to be absolutely fascinating, right,
so it draws its origins In the early two thousands,
Elon Musk partnered up with two other men who were
working on an electric sports car. Those two men eventually
left the company, leaving Elon Musk in charge. There was
some leadership struggle that was involved in that, and Eventually,
what that vehicle became was a car called the Tesla Roadster,
(03:34):
which was Lotus Elise, a British sports car that was
basically just chock full of a bunch of laptop batteries,
and it was notable among the automotive press for being
kind of an oddity an electric sports car. It looked
pretty good, it could go, you know, not a huge
amount of range, but it was sizable and suitable, and
it kind of put Tesla on the map. Then in
twenty twelve they come out with a car called the
(03:55):
Model S which is a larger sedan, and this really
put Tesla in an entirely different class of vehicle than
they had occupied before. They went from an oddity to
something that was genuinely shaking up the mainstream automotive market.
Silicon Valley thinking applied to car making, which at that
time really was not something we had seen before. The
(04:17):
Model ASS you know, grew into a lineup of vehicles
that really at the time were seen as these cool, fast,
easy to charge, long range electric vehicles, something that took
the average person's idea of what an electric vehicle was
and changed it right from something that was kind of
dinky and golf cart esque to something that was genuinely
(04:38):
cool and desirable. You could see that in kind of
the people who owned Tesla's at the time in the
early two thousands, they were seen as sort of forward
thinking and you know, tech minded people. In the years
since then, things have shifted, right. The introduction of the
Model ass really shook up the automotive market. It prompted
General Motors and Volkswagen and Toyota and others around the
(04:59):
globe to start developing their own electric vehicles. Now those
electric vehicle platforms from those established automakers have hit the
market and are in some cases in their second generation.
There is a lot of competition for Tesla, and Tesla
has not updated its line of products. They are still
selling the models with some updates, but still the same
basic car that they were selling back in twenty twelve.
(05:21):
That is a long time for a car to be
on the shelf, essentially. In addition to that, they are
also facing numerous federal investigations into their business, everything from
their hiring practices to their self driving technology. So these
protests are arriving at a moment that is really critical
for Tesla, one that they have not ever faced in
(05:42):
their history before and given Elon Musk is a very
public facing CEO, he plays a big role in that
there's some of these existential problems about competition and the
growing sort of thread of Chinese automakers making competitive EV products.
But there's also just people who don't like the what
having a Tesla says about them. Right, the sale of
(06:05):
bumper stickers that say, yeah, I bought it before you
most crazy, you know, like that's part of.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
This, right.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
I can't think of another car that has the political
ramfications of being owned. You don't hear about the CEO
of GM or Volkswagens somehow being involved in politics. But
before we take a break, I want to ask you,
and I know you're not a car person, but you
are a tech person, and these evs, particularly Tesla, I've
(06:33):
often described as it's not a car, it's.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
A computer with four wheels. Yeah, what's the buzz out there?
Speaker 1 (06:39):
How good a car is Tesla not only on its own,
but in comparison to those other cars that you mentioned
the competition.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
I think that the killer app that Tesla has to
use a Silicon Valley term, is not any specific technology
that their cars contain. It's their charging network, right, It's
not the range of a Model three or a Model Why,
because you can get that in a BMW electric vehicle.
You can get that in a Chevy or a Doyota
electric vehicle. It's the fact that those cars need to
(07:08):
go to public charging stations every once in a while,
and public charging stations are kind of unreliable, with one
notable exception Tesla's charging stations. It's the infrastructure you control,
essentially the gas stations.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
But they're only but they're only for Tesla.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
And I understand now that there is a deal made
with Tesla and other manufacturers that it can be inter
it can inter connect, which.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Form oney on that than anything else that it does.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Exactly. It used to be exclusive to Tesla, and it
wasn't just a you know, a you know, you download
a different app sort of thing. It's like the plug
itself is different. It's like when you go to Europe
and you have to buy new chargers for your phones
and that sort of thing. Now we're seeing electric vehicle
makers adapt their existing EV products to fit Tesla plugs.
(07:55):
I was driving a Ford F one fifty Lightning a
few weeks ago Ford's prominent electric vehicle pickup truck of
the electric version of the F one fifty. I was
given an adapter so that I could charge up at
a public charging station for like a Tesla charger, and
that was very helpful. These are fast chargers, they're reliable.
I think that's that's kind of something to keep an
(08:16):
eye on, right It's their cars might be aging, but
they still own this infrastructure in a way that other
carmakers don't, and that's a reason to not count them
out just yet, despite the fact that their market share
is shrinking and their sales are actually declining. Sales decline
for Tesla for the first time in ten years in
twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 5 (08:39):
It's the Bill Handle showed Neil Savedra hanging out with
you as Bill is having some obvious technical problems. I
think it's probably the metal plate in his head causing interference,
but we'll figure that out. Right now, we're talking with
Tech Tuesday with Mike Tubuski, ABC News Technology reporter. Mike,
I'm a huge Apple guy. I have been an Apple
(09:01):
guy since gosh nineties, very early on and use their
tech throughout my home and the like. They have an
event tomorrow right sometime at ten am. What are the
expectations as to what's going to be brought forward? Don't
they normally have a spring one as well.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Yeah, they actually have grown to have several of pretty
high profile live streamed events over the course of the year. Obviously,
the iPhone is released in the fall ahead of the
holiday shopping season. Usually we get a couple of Mac events,
maybe an iPad event thrown in there as well. Tim Cook, though,
did sort of surprise us last week's CEO of that
company announcing an event for tomorrow and the expectation here
(09:45):
is a new iPhone, but not a new mainline iPhone,
an iPhone S and if you're familiar with the iPhone lineup,
this is the budget one. This is the cheap one.
The current model is four hundred and twenty nine dollars,
and we're expecting a ref rush of it. Essentially, the
existing model has been out on the vine for a
few years now. It's due for a little bit of
(10:06):
a redesign, and that's exactly what we're expecting. The recipe
for this phone has perennially been. Apple takes a newer
processor and puts it in an older phone body, so
customers get a faster software experience, something that hopefully lasts
a little bit longer, and they sacrifice a little bit
of you know, cutting edge design. But at the same time,
(10:28):
Apple gets to save on manufacturing costs and transfer that
savings onto the customer, at least in part. We'll have
to see if that four hundred and twenty nine dollars
price tag stays at four hundred and twenty nine dollars
when it's announced tomorrow.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
So it's been you know, Apple has always been not
a luxury well kind of a luxury yeah brand. There's
just you know, it costs more. God knows. I know
that over the years, it costs more to live in
the ecosystem of Apple, and that has always been their thing.
(11:02):
People will turn over and get the new phones all
the time. I'm a two year guy, but some people
every time they come out, they update them. The SE
is kind of a was a kind of a strange
move for Apple in one way because it was kind
of moving away from that. Has that been a success
(11:23):
for them to focus on the SE It's whether it's
their watches, the or the now the iPhone.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Yeah, it's a good question, right, whether you know this
kind of cheapens the brand at all, and from what
we understand, this is not the best selling iPhone by
any stretch of the imagination, because if you think about it,
it's kind of facing competition on two fronts.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
It is a couple hundred dollars cheaper than you know,
your standard iPhone sixteen at this point, but that phone
offers a whole lot more features, and you know, there's
a whole variety of different payment plans and discounts that
you can get. In addition, it's also facing competition from
other iPhones, right, you can buy an iPhone fifteen or
an iPhone fourteen that's been refurbished that you know kind
(12:06):
of competes with this price point. So it's a sort
of odd duck in the lineup, But it does allow
an earlier, cheaper access point for people who want to
get into that Apple ecosystem. And you're absolutely right to
identify that that ecosystem is hugely powerful. Right, If you
buy an iPhone and you want some headphones, well it's
(12:26):
kind of the easiest thing to get is another pair
of Apple branded earphones. And if you already have the
phone and the earbuds and you maybe want a smartwatch
or a laptop, well the smartwatcher laptop that's going to
work best with those products are other Apple products, and
Apple has ridden that strategy to a multi trillion dollar
(12:47):
valuation in its business. However, there are kind of storm
clouds on the horizon here. People are not upgrading their
phones with the same cadence that they did ten fifteen
years ago, in part because phones are a lot more
expensive now. I think that's also why you've seen Apple
add to their strategy a little bit, introducing recurring revenue streams,
things like subscription services to you know, streaming television, streaming music,
(13:12):
cloud storage, that type of thing. So another sort of
element to Apple's larger business strategy, which has clearly worked
out for them so far.
Speaker 5 (13:21):
Mike Tubuski, ABC News Technology reporter with US one more question, Mike,
it just seems like a weird flex if you're gonna
come out tomorrow and have a you know, an Apple
an event of any kind when the past week's tech
sites and social media have been inundated with Samsung's AI
(13:42):
technology blowing Apple out of the water. When it comes
to I don't know what you call us tech, but
erase intelligent erasing technology. So take a picture of me
with my hand in front of my face. It could
literally remove the hand and recreate my face behind it.
That tech has been seen with Samsung right now, and
(14:05):
it's all over the place to put out a you know,
kind of a cheap version of the phone versus addressing
some of those AI. Do you think that there's going
to be any talk or catch up with Apple with
that tech AI tech coming soon, Well, it's certainly.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Not the place where Apple would launch the latest and
greatest of their artificial intelligence efforts.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Apple has been branding their AI apple Intelligence. They get
the sort of acronym alongside that as well. But you're
absolutely right, it's not really at the same level as
some of its competitors from Samsung and also Google, which
has been in this game for much longer than those
other two companies and actually supplies Gemini artificial intelligence to
(14:48):
a number of other manufacturers that are out there, among
them Samsung and OnePlus and others. So, yeah, Apple has
been lagging behind in the artificial intelligence game. And you
know it's possible given the fact that this iPhone se
is expected to get a newer chip, that there will
be some artificial intelligence component here, but it's certainly not
(15:10):
going to be anything I think mind blowing or any
sort of like large scale revision of their AI strategy.
Speaker 5 (15:17):
The other so strange, Yeah, it's under the circumstances like, hey,
yes they're kicking our ass in AI technology on Samsung,
but here's a cheap phone, right.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
But on the other hand, though, there is a risk
that these phone manufacturers run with artificial intelligence. The ability
to remove people in photos that you take opens up
the world to a whole lot of questions about what
is real, and putting this technology in everybody's pocket is
a concern for many people who are you anxious about
disinformation and its ability to spread easily, to say nothing
(15:50):
of some of the other sort of large language model
questions that that companies like open Ai and Samsung and
Google are facing Apple.
Speaker 5 (15:58):
You know times indeed, sorry, Mike up against the clock here.
That's the one thing we all know is real time.
Mike time is real, Mike Dubusky, ABC News Technology reporter,
appreciate you for coming on as always, all right, Neil
Savager here, Bill Handles having some technical problems. We'll be
back with more, including Riverside County Sheriff Bianco entering the
(16:18):
governor's race. Law and order seems to be the note
of the day. We'll have more. Will we come back.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Well, how about that. We're out of time for this segment.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
And Neil, congratulations on spending so much time with Mike Dubuski.
But he had pretty important things to say. So you
know what, let me do this really quickly. I can
do this, and then we'll go to the last segment
of the Takeover the Kennedy Center.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
And this has to do with a.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
New candidate entering the California governor's race. Riverside County Sheriff
Bianco Chad Bianco a.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Law and ordered guy to the nth degree.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
And he said at a press conference, the California dream
has turned into a nightmare for people struggling with rising
prices for food, groceries, electricity, and housing. As if a
governor can now really deal without all of this, and
he said, what have they given us, referring to Democrats,
rampant crime, higher taxes, the highest cost of living in
(17:26):
our nation, tent encampments in every major city, more fentanyl debts,
catastrophic fires, broken homeowners insurance market.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Yep, here it is Democrats are responsible for all of it.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Not that they're not responsible for a lot of policy,
but here it is the governor did all of it right.
It's much like the last run for president. The only
thing that Bianco did not say, which I'm sure he
is going to is Newsome is responsible for the kidnapping
of the Lindburg baby and we have to deal with that.
(18:03):
So he was elected in twenty eighteen, reelected in twenty
twenty two, and he is now running as the most
crime and order I would argue, politically, about as far
right as we have seen in a very long time.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
The last time we had.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Of course, he's running as a Republican, the last time
we had a Republican governor.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
And look how backar far back that goes, because you know,
it just seemed yesterday was Arnold Schwarzenegger two thousand and six.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
I mean, okay, and if you look at what Schwarzenegger
did and his run and what his governance was as
a governor during his tenure, he would be considered today
a wild assed left wing liberal by the Republican Party.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
And so we will see the only thing I really sweats.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
I mean, at this point, Bianco is in pretty good
shape in terms of name recognition and a run for
the governorship because there really isn't anybody there. Gavin Newsom
has turned out. The only thing he has to really
sweat is Kamala Harris. Is she going to run again?
And if she runs again, this is exactly what happened
(19:21):
to Richard Nixon. He lost in nineteen sixty and he
ran for governor in nineteen sixty two and was trampled
by Governor Pat Brown, who is the father of Jerry Brown.
And that's where that famous phrase that Nixon came up with.
(19:43):
You won't have Dick Nixon anymore to bat around or
to whatever he said something I'm paraphrasing that.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Same thing. We'll see, we'll see.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
All right, coming up, Let's finish it with what's happening
at the takeover of the Kennedy Center.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
And why not? I mean, this just keeps on going
and going.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Last segment of the show and I will be taking
phone calls right after the show off the air for
handle on the law marginal legal advice. And that's we
go through that one pretty quickly. I'll tell you about
that as we get off the air.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Now, Yeah, I'm gonna give the number eight seven seven
five to zero eleven fifty. I do that as we leave.
But thank you, Robin. Robin reminds me this is good stuff.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
I know.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
She you know, is on top of things.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Because I will ask for phone calls and not give
out a phone number.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
That's a normal thing for me. Hey, just call me.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Not gonna give you the phone number, but call me
right now and no phone number.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
All right, let's end it with.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Another Okay, we're in four years of spectacular change. Of
all of the governmental projects out there, governmental institutions, probably
one of the most non political is the Kennedy Center.
The Kennedy Center is for performing arts, and they give
(21:13):
the Kennedy Center Honors every year, and they also invite
previous honorees and they do I think six a year.
This is for people who have made extraordinary achievements in
the arts. And I mean the people have gotten that
Tom Hanks has gotten that you had musicians, You've had writers, performers,
(21:36):
and so what ended up happening is that it.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Has become very political. And why is that?
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Because you have certain people, For example, the twenty seventeen honorees,
three of them Lionel, Richie, Norman Lear, dancer Carmen de Levy.
Did I have no idea who that Carmen is, but
certainly Lionel, Ritchie and Norman Lear told the Center they're
not going to go to the customary White House reception
(22:02):
held before the ceremony.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
No, no, thank you.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
It's political, they said, Donald Trump, It's that simple.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
And Donald Trump has had a few instances of that.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
A couple of championship I think it was a hockey team,
a football team, also a basketball team who won the
championship and they just said, no, we're not coming. That's
a political statement. There's no way around it. Because you
go to the White House and you're honored by the
president when you win. So this is what Trump does.
As we know, you hit me, I hit you back
(22:34):
twice as hard. He's taken over the Kennedy Center.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
He said, we're done.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
No, you want to play that game, I can play
it to twice as hard fires. Everybody who is on
the board puts his people on, and he names himself
as the chair, which has never ever happened before.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
And here is one of the things they put on.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Two thousand perform every year across twelve stages the Kennedy Center.
And there was one clip that was shown to the
president of an event featuring drag queens. Now, there are
campus features of different sizes and different performances, cabaret performances,
(23:20):
tours of Broadway, hits, et cetera. And there was a
drag queen event and he saw it not at the
Kennedy Center per se, but one of the venues.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
And it was a small cabaret kind of thing that
drag queens are at.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
And it's sort of this is what America is about
kind of thing. Okay, here's the post. No more drag
shows or any other anti American propaganda.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Only the best. Okay, no more woke. Now you know
what's the bottom line here?
Speaker 1 (23:52):
I think when people make a political statement against Trump,
don't be surprised that he comes back and makes a
political statement right back.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
I certainly would. And so what's the way you could
do it?
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Is he going to come in with a bulldozer and
destroy the Kennedy Center.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
He is not so what he's going to do.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
And he has the power to do that because he
chooses the board, he chooses who runs the Kennedy Center.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
And he said, you're done. It's me Nol and we're
not going to see this.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
I'll tell you you're not going to see any Candida
center on a rees for the next ten years, saying
oh no, I'm not coming to the White House now,
I don't like this president.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
All right, it's politics.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
It has become politics, and the response is politics, and
of course people.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Are in an uproar over it. Okay, so be it.
We're done. Guys coming up.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
It's Gary and Shannon and I'm taking phone calls for
Handle on the Law off the air. Eight seven seven
five to zero eleven fifty. Robin, you're happy that I
give the phone number out eight seven seven five two
zero eleven fifty. There are no breaks, there are no commercials,
there's no traffic, there's no weather, and there is no
patience when I answer the phone calls. So they go
(25:08):
very quickly, starting in just a moment. Eight seven seven
five two zero eleven fifty. You've been listening to the
Bill Handle Show, Catch My Show Monday through Friday six
am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the
iHeartRadio app
You're listening to KFI AM six forty the Bill Handles
show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. We are covering
the stories well. Coming up at eight thirty and this
is news. Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco has announced his
candidacy for California governor hardliner, and we'll talk about that
and this air crash yesterday at Toronto International Airport in
(00:26):
which a regional jet, a Canadian jet that had eighty
people on it, came in to land, flipped over, hit
the runway, flipped over. Everybody survived, I mean, a miracle
beyond miracles.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Now it's Tech Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Usually Richard Murrow's with us, but Mike Dubuski, ABC News
Technology reporter has been kind enough to join us, which
he does occasionally.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Mike, thank you for taking the time for joining us.
Quick question. Oh and this is a good one because
this is one of my favorite topics. What is a
or the Tesla takedown movement?
Speaker 3 (01:05):
So this is a movement that we've seen crop up
in recent days at various Tesla locations, So Tesla stores,
Tesla service centers, charging locations, that type of thing. It's
a protest movement at the end of the day, one
that was founded online primarily on one of the major
X competitors out there, which is Blue Sky. And they say,
(01:26):
these protesters that they want to hit Elon Musk where
it hurts, which is Tesla, that is his most prominent
and one of his most successful businesses. And these are
protesters and demonstrators that are dissatisfied with Elon Musk's recent
right word shift in his politics and more specifically his
actions at the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE. Recently
(01:49):
instructed the federal government to layoff thousands of workers and
has recently gained access to troves of information coming under
a lot of criticism with regards to transparency and that
type of thing. These protesters say that Elon Musk amounts
to an unelected billionaire wreaking havoc on our government. And
if you go to organizers' websites, they say that they
want owners to sell their Tesla's, dump their stock, and
(02:12):
join the picket lines because hurting Tesla is stopping Musk,
and stopping Musk will help save lives and democracy.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Okay, so this is a political movement.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
It is not a movement that says Tesla's are kind
of junkie and we're all going to get together and
get rid of them.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
And as a quick aside, I bought a.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Tesla and it lasted two weeks.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Two weeks.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
I've been driving a BMW for twenty years and I
caved in and bought a Tesla because I wanted an
EV And I was thrilled because a week a week
after I bought it must set. Oh, there's a twenty
percent discount now, And it dropped twenty percent that minute,
and I sold it at sixteen thousand dollars loss because
(03:00):
I didn't think it was a very good car. What
is going on with that?
Speaker 2 (03:03):
Is it? Do people realize or do people believe?
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Now it's act it was the only one out there
and now there's a lot of competitors.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
What's going on with the technology.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
The history of Tesla I find to be absolutely fascinating, right,
so it draws its origins In the early two thousands,
Elon Musk partnered up with two other men who were
working on an electric sports car. Those two men eventually
left the company, leaving Elon Musk in charge. There was
some leadership struggle that was involved in that, and Eventually,
what that vehicle became was a car called the Tesla Roadster,
(03:34):
which was Lotus Elise, a British sports car that was
basically just chock full of a bunch of laptop batteries,
and it was notable among the automotive press for being
kind of an oddity an electric sports car. It looked
pretty good, it could go, you know, not a huge
amount of range, but it was sizable and suitable, and
it kind of put Tesla on the map. Then in
twenty twelve they come out with a car called the
(03:55):
Model S which is a larger sedan, and this really
put Tesla in an entirely different class of vehicle than
they had occupied before. They went from an oddity to
something that was genuinely shaking up the mainstream automotive market.
Silicon Valley thinking applied to car making, which at that
time really was not something we had seen before. The
(04:17):
Model ASS you know, grew into a lineup of vehicles
that really at the time were seen as these cool, fast,
easy to charge, long range electric vehicles, something that took
the average person's idea of what an electric vehicle was
and changed it right from something that was kind of
dinky and golf cart esque to something that was genuinely
(04:38):
cool and desirable. You could see that in kind of
the people who owned Tesla's at the time in the
early two thousands, they were seen as sort of forward
thinking and you know, tech minded people. In the years
since then, things have shifted, right. The introduction of the
Model ass really shook up the automotive market. It prompted
General Motors and Volkswagen and Toyota and others around the
(04:59):
globe to start developing their own electric vehicles. Now those
electric vehicle platforms from those established automakers have hit the
market and are in some cases in their second generation.
There is a lot of competition for Tesla, and Tesla
has not updated its line of products. They are still
selling the models with some updates, but still the same
basic car that they were selling back in twenty twelve.
(05:21):
That is a long time for a car to be
on the shelf, essentially. In addition to that, they are
also facing numerous federal investigations into their business, everything from
their hiring practices to their self driving technology. So these
protests are arriving at a moment that is really critical
for Tesla, one that they have not ever faced in
(05:42):
their history before and given Elon Musk is a very
public facing CEO, he plays a big role in that
there's some of these existential problems about competition and the
growing sort of thread of Chinese automakers making competitive EV products.
But there's also just people who don't like the what
having a Tesla says about them. Right, the sale of
(06:05):
bumper stickers that say, yeah, I bought it before you
most crazy, you know, like that's part of.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
This, right.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
I can't think of another car that has the political
ramfications of being owned. You don't hear about the CEO
of GM or Volkswagens somehow being involved in politics. But
before we take a break, I want to ask you,
and I know you're not a car person, but you
are a tech person, and these evs, particularly Tesla, I've
(06:33):
often described as it's not a car, it's.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
A computer with four wheels. Yeah, what's the buzz out there?
Speaker 1 (06:39):
How good a car is Tesla not only on its own,
but in comparison to those other cars that you mentioned
the competition.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
I think that the killer app that Tesla has to
use a Silicon Valley term, is not any specific technology
that their cars contain. It's their charging network, right, It's
not the range of a Model three or a Model Why,
because you can get that in a BMW electric vehicle.
You can get that in a Chevy or a Doyota
electric vehicle. It's the fact that those cars need to
(07:08):
go to public charging stations every once in a while,
and public charging stations are kind of unreliable, with one
notable exception Tesla's charging stations. It's the infrastructure you control,
essentially the gas stations.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
But they're only but they're only for Tesla.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
And I understand now that there is a deal made
with Tesla and other manufacturers that it can be inter
it can inter connect, which.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
Form oney on that than anything else that it does.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Exactly. It used to be exclusive to Tesla, and it
wasn't just a you know, a you know, you download
a different app sort of thing. It's like the plug
itself is different. It's like when you go to Europe
and you have to buy new chargers for your phones
and that sort of thing. Now we're seeing electric vehicle
makers adapt their existing EV products to fit Tesla plugs.
(07:55):
I was driving a Ford F one fifty Lightning a
few weeks ago Ford's prominent electric vehicle pickup truck of
the electric version of the F one fifty. I was
given an adapter so that I could charge up at
a public charging station for like a Tesla charger, and
that was very helpful. These are fast chargers, they're reliable.
I think that's that's kind of something to keep an
(08:16):
eye on, right It's their cars might be aging, but
they still own this infrastructure in a way that other
carmakers don't, and that's a reason to not count them
out just yet, despite the fact that their market share
is shrinking and their sales are actually declining. Sales decline
for Tesla for the first time in ten years in
twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4 (08:33):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 5 (08:39):
It's the Bill Handle showed Neil Savedra hanging out with
you as Bill is having some obvious technical problems. I
think it's probably the metal plate in his head causing interference,
but we'll figure that out. Right now, we're talking with
Tech Tuesday with Mike Tubuski, ABC News Technology reporter. Mike,
I'm a huge Apple guy. I have been an Apple
(09:01):
guy since gosh nineties, very early on and use their
tech throughout my home and the like. They have an
event tomorrow right sometime at ten am. What are the
expectations as to what's going to be brought forward? Don't
they normally have a spring one as well.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Yeah, they actually have grown to have several of pretty
high profile live streamed events over the course of the year. Obviously,
the iPhone is released in the fall ahead of the
holiday shopping season. Usually we get a couple of Mac events,
maybe an iPad event thrown in there as well. Tim Cook, though,
did sort of surprise us last week's CEO of that
company announcing an event for tomorrow and the expectation here
(09:45):
is a new iPhone, but not a new mainline iPhone,
an iPhone S and if you're familiar with the iPhone lineup,
this is the budget one. This is the cheap one.
The current model is four hundred and twenty nine dollars,
and we're expecting a ref rush of it. Essentially, the
existing model has been out on the vine for a
few years now. It's due for a little bit of
(10:06):
a redesign, and that's exactly what we're expecting. The recipe
for this phone has perennially been. Apple takes a newer
processor and puts it in an older phone body, so
customers get a faster software experience, something that hopefully lasts
a little bit longer, and they sacrifice a little bit
of you know, cutting edge design. But at the same time,
(10:28):
Apple gets to save on manufacturing costs and transfer that
savings onto the customer, at least in part. We'll have
to see if that four hundred and twenty nine dollars
price tag stays at four hundred and twenty nine dollars
when it's announced tomorrow.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
So it's been you know, Apple has always been not
a luxury well kind of a luxury yeah brand. There's
just you know, it costs more. God knows. I know
that over the years, it costs more to live in
the ecosystem of Apple, and that has always been their thing.
(11:02):
People will turn over and get the new phones all
the time. I'm a two year guy, but some people
every time they come out, they update them. The SE
is kind of a was a kind of a strange
move for Apple in one way because it was kind
of moving away from that. Has that been a success
(11:23):
for them to focus on the SE It's whether it's
their watches, the or the now the iPhone.
Speaker 3 (11:30):
Yeah, it's a good question, right, whether you know this
kind of cheapens the brand at all, and from what
we understand, this is not the best selling iPhone by
any stretch of the imagination, because if you think about it,
it's kind of facing competition on two fronts.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Right.
Speaker 3 (11:44):
It is a couple hundred dollars cheaper than you know,
your standard iPhone sixteen at this point, but that phone
offers a whole lot more features, and you know, there's
a whole variety of different payment plans and discounts that
you can get. In addition, it's also facing competition from
other iPhones, right, you can buy an iPhone fifteen or
an iPhone fourteen that's been refurbished that you know kind
(12:06):
of competes with this price point. So it's a sort
of odd duck in the lineup, But it does allow
an earlier, cheaper access point for people who want to
get into that Apple ecosystem. And you're absolutely right to
identify that that ecosystem is hugely powerful. Right, If you
buy an iPhone and you want some headphones, well it's
(12:26):
kind of the easiest thing to get is another pair
of Apple branded earphones. And if you already have the
phone and the earbuds and you maybe want a smartwatch
or a laptop, well the smartwatcher laptop that's going to
work best with those products are other Apple products, and
Apple has ridden that strategy to a multi trillion dollar
(12:47):
valuation in its business. However, there are kind of storm
clouds on the horizon here. People are not upgrading their
phones with the same cadence that they did ten fifteen
years ago, in part because phones are a lot more
expensive now. I think that's also why you've seen Apple
add to their strategy a little bit, introducing recurring revenue streams,
things like subscription services to you know, streaming television, streaming music,
(13:12):
cloud storage, that type of thing. So another sort of
element to Apple's larger business strategy, which has clearly worked
out for them so far.
Speaker 5 (13:21):
Mike Tubuski, ABC News Technology reporter with US one more question, Mike,
it just seems like a weird flex if you're gonna
come out tomorrow and have a you know, an Apple
an event of any kind when the past week's tech
sites and social media have been inundated with Samsung's AI
(13:42):
technology blowing Apple out of the water. When it comes
to I don't know what you call us tech, but
erase intelligent erasing technology. So take a picture of me
with my hand in front of my face. It could
literally remove the hand and recreate my face behind it.
That tech has been seen with Samsung right now, and
(14:05):
it's all over the place to put out a you know,
kind of a cheap version of the phone versus addressing
some of those AI. Do you think that there's going
to be any talk or catch up with Apple with
that tech AI tech coming soon, Well, it's certainly.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Not the place where Apple would launch the latest and
greatest of their artificial intelligence efforts.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Right.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Apple has been branding their AI apple Intelligence. They get
the sort of acronym alongside that as well. But you're
absolutely right, it's not really at the same level as
some of its competitors from Samsung and also Google, which
has been in this game for much longer than those
other two companies and actually supplies Gemini artificial intelligence to
(14:48):
a number of other manufacturers that are out there, among
them Samsung and OnePlus and others. So, yeah, Apple has
been lagging behind in the artificial intelligence game. And you
know it's possible given the fact that this iPhone se
is expected to get a newer chip, that there will
be some artificial intelligence component here, but it's certainly not
(15:10):
going to be anything I think mind blowing or any
sort of like large scale revision of their AI strategy.
Speaker 5 (15:17):
The other so strange, Yeah, it's under the circumstances like, hey,
yes they're kicking our ass in AI technology on Samsung,
but here's a cheap phone, right.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
But on the other hand, though, there is a risk
that these phone manufacturers run with artificial intelligence. The ability
to remove people in photos that you take opens up
the world to a whole lot of questions about what
is real, and putting this technology in everybody's pocket is
a concern for many people who are you anxious about
disinformation and its ability to spread easily, to say nothing
(15:50):
of some of the other sort of large language model
questions that that companies like open Ai and Samsung and
Google are facing Apple.
Speaker 5 (15:58):
You know times indeed, sorry, Mike up against the clock here.
That's the one thing we all know is real time.
Mike time is real, Mike Dubusky, ABC News Technology reporter,
appreciate you for coming on as always, all right, Neil
Savager here, Bill Handles having some technical problems. We'll be
back with more, including Riverside County Sheriff Bianco entering the
(16:18):
governor's race. Law and order seems to be the note
of the day. We'll have more. Will we come back.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Well, how about that. We're out of time for this segment.
Speaker 1 (16:34):
And Neil, congratulations on spending so much time with Mike Dubuski.
But he had pretty important things to say. So you
know what, let me do this really quickly. I can
do this, and then we'll go to the last segment
of the Takeover the Kennedy Center.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
And this has to do with a.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
New candidate entering the California governor's race. Riverside County Sheriff
Bianco Chad Bianco a.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Law and ordered guy to the nth degree.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
And he said at a press conference, the California dream
has turned into a nightmare for people struggling with rising
prices for food, groceries, electricity, and housing. As if a
governor can now really deal without all of this, and
he said, what have they given us, referring to Democrats,
rampant crime, higher taxes, the highest cost of living in
(17:26):
our nation, tent encampments in every major city, more fentanyl debts,
catastrophic fires, broken homeowners insurance market.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Yep, here it is Democrats are responsible for all of it.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Not that they're not responsible for a lot of policy,
but here it is the governor did all of it right.
It's much like the last run for president. The only
thing that Bianco did not say, which I'm sure he
is going to is Newsome is responsible for the kidnapping
of the Lindburg baby and we have to deal with that.
(18:03):
So he was elected in twenty eighteen, reelected in twenty
twenty two, and he is now running as the most
crime and order I would argue, politically, about as far
right as we have seen in a very long time.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
The last time we had.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Of course, he's running as a Republican, the last time
we had a Republican governor.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
And look how backar far back that goes, because you know,
it just seemed yesterday was Arnold Schwarzenegger two thousand and six.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
I mean, okay, and if you look at what Schwarzenegger
did and his run and what his governance was as
a governor during his tenure, he would be considered today
a wild assed left wing liberal by the Republican Party.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
And so we will see the only thing I really sweats.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
I mean, at this point, Bianco is in pretty good
shape in terms of name recognition and a run for
the governorship because there really isn't anybody there. Gavin Newsom
has turned out. The only thing he has to really
sweat is Kamala Harris. Is she going to run again?
And if she runs again, this is exactly what happened
(19:21):
to Richard Nixon. He lost in nineteen sixty and he
ran for governor in nineteen sixty two and was trampled
by Governor Pat Brown, who is the father of Jerry Brown.
And that's where that famous phrase that Nixon came up with.
(19:43):
You won't have Dick Nixon anymore to bat around or
to whatever he said something I'm paraphrasing that.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
Same thing. We'll see, we'll see.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
All right, coming up, Let's finish it with what's happening
at the takeover of the Kennedy Center.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
And why not? I mean, this just keeps on going
and going.
Speaker 4 (20:03):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Last segment of the show and I will be taking
phone calls right after the show off the air for
handle on the law marginal legal advice. And that's we
go through that one pretty quickly. I'll tell you about
that as we get off the air.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Now, Yeah, I'm gonna give the number eight seven seven
five to zero eleven fifty. I do that as we leave.
But thank you, Robin. Robin reminds me this is good stuff.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
I know.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
She you know, is on top of things.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
Because I will ask for phone calls and not give
out a phone number.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
That's a normal thing for me. Hey, just call me.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Not gonna give you the phone number, but call me
right now and no phone number.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
All right, let's end it with.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
Another Okay, we're in four years of spectacular change. Of
all of the governmental projects out there, governmental institutions, probably
one of the most non political is the Kennedy Center.
The Kennedy Center is for performing arts, and they give
(21:13):
the Kennedy Center Honors every year, and they also invite
previous honorees and they do I think six a year.
This is for people who have made extraordinary achievements in
the arts. And I mean the people have gotten that
Tom Hanks has gotten that you had musicians, You've had writers, performers,
(21:36):
and so what ended up happening is that it.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Has become very political. And why is that?
Speaker 1 (21:41):
Because you have certain people, For example, the twenty seventeen honorees,
three of them Lionel, Richie, Norman Lear, dancer Carmen de Levy.
Did I have no idea who that Carmen is, but
certainly Lionel, Ritchie and Norman Lear told the Center they're
not going to go to the customary White House reception
(22:02):
held before the ceremony.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
No, no, thank you.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
It's political, they said, Donald Trump, It's that simple.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
And Donald Trump has had a few instances of that.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
A couple of championship I think it was a hockey team,
a football team, also a basketball team who won the
championship and they just said, no, we're not coming. That's
a political statement. There's no way around it. Because you
go to the White House and you're honored by the
president when you win. So this is what Trump does.
As we know, you hit me, I hit you back
(22:34):
twice as hard. He's taken over the Kennedy Center.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
He said, we're done.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
No, you want to play that game, I can play
it to twice as hard fires. Everybody who is on
the board puts his people on, and he names himself
as the chair, which has never ever happened before.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
And here is one of the things they put on.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Two thousand perform every year across twelve stages the Kennedy Center.
And there was one clip that was shown to the
president of an event featuring drag queens. Now, there are
campus features of different sizes and different performances, cabaret performances,
(23:20):
tours of Broadway, hits, et cetera. And there was a
drag queen event and he saw it not at the
Kennedy Center per se, but one of the venues.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
And it was a small cabaret kind of thing that
drag queens are at.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
And it's sort of this is what America is about
kind of thing. Okay, here's the post. No more drag
shows or any other anti American propaganda.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
Only the best. Okay, no more woke. Now you know
what's the bottom line here?
Speaker 1 (23:52):
I think when people make a political statement against Trump,
don't be surprised that he comes back and makes a
political statement right back.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
I certainly would. And so what's the way you could
do it?
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Is he going to come in with a bulldozer and
destroy the Kennedy Center.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
He is not so what he's going to do.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
And he has the power to do that because he
chooses the board, he chooses who runs the Kennedy Center.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
And he said, you're done. It's me Nol and we're
not going to see this.
Speaker 1 (24:22):
I'll tell you you're not going to see any Candida
center on a rees for the next ten years, saying
oh no, I'm not coming to the White House now,
I don't like this president.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
All right, it's politics.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
It has become politics, and the response is politics, and
of course people.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Are in an uproar over it. Okay, so be it.
We're done. Guys coming up.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
It's Gary and Shannon and I'm taking phone calls for
Handle on the Law off the air. Eight seven seven
five to zero eleven fifty. Robin, you're happy that I
give the phone number out eight seven seven five two
zero eleven fifty. There are no breaks, there are no commercials,
there's no traffic, there's no weather, and there is no
patience when I answer the phone calls. So they go
(25:08):
very quickly, starting in just a moment. Eight seven seven
five two zero eleven fifty. You've been listening to the
Bill Handle Show, Catch My Show Monday through Friday six
am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the
iHeartRadio app
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