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00:02:00.000Listen, we've got a packed show and lots to get to.
00:02:02.000An amazing debate, actually, for LA mayor with Spencer Pratt, who is Really taking the nation and social media by storm.
00:02:12.000We're going to get to that as well in hour two with Steve Hilton, who is going to be joining us to go over his gubernatorial debate from just a couple days ago.
00:02:21.000Blake, I wouldn't say you're the most positive about the prospects in California, but nevertheless, I think it's a very important case study in just how insane left wing politics have gotten, how corrupt, how dysfunctional, how inept, how poorly run Democrat jurisdictions are, and people are voting with their feet.
00:02:56.000We wanted to lead the story, lead the show today with a story out of Virginia.
00:03:01.000We mentioned it briefly on the show yesterday, and that is about, you know, an FBI raid over a state senator, Louisa Lucas, who is a state senator in Virginia, who led the.
00:03:17.000And then lo and behold, all of a sudden, her cannabis dispensary, yes, she has a cannabis dispensary, gets raided by the FBI along with some other properties that she owned, offices that she controlled.
00:03:30.000Blake, you highlighted this wonderful article breaking it all down for us.
00:03:47.000Well entrenched lawmakers that you'll see, often Democrats at the state level.
00:03:52.000They've been there a very, very long time, have a lot of institutional power.
00:03:55.000So she's not the majority leader, but she was perceived as playing a very central role in redrawing the state's maps, ramming that through.1.00
00:04:04.000And now, just a few days after their vote, she's raided by the FBI.0.99
00:04:10.000They came in, it was almost like it was a J 6 array.1.00
00:04:13.000They had SWAT teams busting in to her dispensary and several other buildings.1.00
00:04:17.000She has a whole network of different entities and companies that are linked to her or her family.
00:04:23.000They almost all have Lucas in the name Lucas Lodge LLC.
00:04:27.000Which runs group homes, the cannabis outlet, Lucas Professional Center, Lucas Hospitality, Lucas Medical Transportation.
00:04:33.000We know that is a very fraught business.
00:04:37.000We don't know, no charges have been dropped yet, but it's a lot of connections to companies where we know political corruption is a big opportunity.
00:04:47.000Virginia is one of those states where you can run a licensed cannabis dispensary, excuse me, and it's easier to get if you have some sort of.
00:04:58.000It's one of those ways things you can get more easily if you have political connections.
00:05:09.000When they legalized, which was my home state, when they legalized it, there was a massive push at the political level, the local level, to basically get their hands on it because they only give out so many permits for cannabis dispensaries.
00:05:23.000That's sort of the handshake deal here, right?
00:05:25.000We're going to legalize it, but we're going to control it, contain it in certain ways.
00:05:30.000One of which is they give only a certain number of permits for facilities that maybe are like indoor greenhouses that could grow it and storefronts.
00:05:38.000So, if you want to sell cannabis to the public, weed, you have to get a permit.
00:05:44.000Well, guess who tends to get those permits, Blake?
00:05:47.000Not guys like you and me, because we probably will not.
00:05:52.000It tends to be the politically well healed and well connected, which is exactly Luis Lucas, who this person is.
00:05:59.000By the way, shout out to the channel VA Change Agent.
00:06:03.000Who published this very detailed document on X, VA change agent?
00:06:08.000Check it out if you want to follow along.
00:06:10.000But this is what's revealed in it, Blake, is that this is a sitting state senator out of Virginia that has consolidated power over the years.
00:06:19.000This is not a collection of random businesses, it's a vertically integrated operation.
00:06:36.000Day support and direct care, all feeding off Medicaid dollars while her political entities launder influence and campaign cash back into the system.1.00
00:06:45.000Her owned businesses are funneling money back into her campaign pack.0.61
00:06:51.000And get this the same person, this is Louise Lucas, who's chairing the Senate Finance and Appropriations Committee, which funds Medicaid in the state of Virginia, she personally owns all these buildings.
00:07:02.000So she's on the committee that disperses the funds.
00:07:06.000She owns the business that benefits off the Medicaid funds.0.73
00:07:10.000Dollars that are flowing through, and she might just happen to have been involved in a corruption scandal giving her access to the cannabis dispensary.0.54
00:07:18.000She also received that approximately correct.
00:07:21.000She received Lucas Lodge LLC, received in Portsmouth, received two different.
00:07:29.000She had Lucas Lodge, and she received a total of about $600,000 in PPP loans in 2020, which may have been repaid, but they may also have just been forgiven.
00:07:38.000It says paid in full or forgiven, so no easy way to tell there.
00:07:44.000One of the funny things about this is she's fighting back by claiming this is a political retaliation from the Trump administration.
00:07:51.000The awkward thing is, as reported by Bill Malusion on Fox and some other outlets, is that this investigation apparently originates in the Biden administration.
00:08:00.000I feel like maybe she would have had better odds if she just, we know a few Democrats have had success with that, where she says, I was about to expose the Democrat Biden machine.
00:08:10.000And that's worked occasionally on President Trump with a few other Democrats.
00:08:15.000She might have a better shot with that.
00:08:17.000We're talking not just $600,000 in PPE loans.
00:08:20.000We're talking $42.3 million in Medicaid taxpayer dollars funneled to Senator Luis Lucas's operation between 2006 and 2025.
00:08:43.000And what's wild is that she gets her cannabis dispensary rated.
00:08:50.000And that seems to be where maybe the corruption scandal, that is the smoking gun, if you will, but is exposing one little Virginia state senator that none of us had ever heard about.
00:08:59.000It's exposing the depth to which corruption takes root when political power like this gets entrenched.
00:09:06.000This is why I think this story is emblematic.0.95
00:09:08.000We started this week talking with Luke Rosiak at the Daily Wire about the fraud in Ohio and about how all these safeguards had been taken off the Medicaid programs, and a billion dollars goes out the doors to Somalis doing fraudulent daycare for their family members.0.90
00:09:25.000And now you see another example in Barely Blue, Virginia, where the same thing has happened to a woman that's been able to remain in power for a very long time in a very lucrative sense.0.98
00:09:38.000Andrew, I found something pretty amazing because she's been around a long time.0.83
00:09:41.000And if a lot of people who are lifers in Virginia are saying she's absolute garbage, has been involved in everything.
00:09:47.000And a really amazing story this is from summer 2020, the summer of Floyd, when they were having a lot of.0.70
00:09:55.000Left wing riots, demonstrations, left wingers.
00:09:57.000What were they doing at the very beginning of that?
00:10:01.000They were spray painting statues, ripping them down.
00:10:04.000And there was an incident where she gets caught on a police body camera telling police this is a direct quote from the body camera footage I'm Senator Luis Lucas.
00:10:15.000I know I'm in disguise, but they are going to put some paint on this thing, this thing being one of the statues they were targeting.
00:10:29.000So she's going around undercover, ordering police not to arrest vandals who are defacing or destroying public property in the summer of Floyd.1.00
00:11:07.000But it didn't surprise me, but it's a reflection of just how out of touch, or how about this, how tribal people are in these areas where people like Luis Lucas get their stranglehold on power.
00:11:53.000Character assassination, and we hope that it's not nothing, but at the same time, the community, myself, Earl Lewis, I'm gonna stick with her.
00:12:03.000Those are her constituents that put her into office, and they say she's done more good than bad.
00:12:58.000She was the co sponsor of the cannabis legislation, and then she opened the cannabis outlet the same year the legislation passed, which is now the subject of an active FBI corruption bribery investigation.
00:13:13.000So she co sponsored that legislation and then immediately profited off of it.
00:13:18.000Here's one other thing that we should talk about.
00:13:21.000The Luis's Lucas's facilities have one of the worst safety and compliance records of any of such facilities in the state of Virginia.
00:13:33.000They found 217 citations since 2021, among the highest violation counts of any, they call intellectual developmental disabilities provider in Virginia.
00:13:45.000They've had nine individuals die while in care.
00:15:07.000You need a kind of unified body politic for politics to actually become a competition for providing the best services, providing the best moral conduct, providing good things for the whole society.
00:15:19.000And America had that for a long time and we achieved a lot of great things.
00:15:23.000But we have, through immigration, through DEI, through just the rhetoric of the left, we've been.
00:15:30.000Racing towards an alternative way of doing politics.
00:15:32.000And if you want to see how it works out, well, we'll be talking about the Pope himself in a few minutes.
00:15:37.000The Pope himself has told us to look at Lebanon.
00:15:39.000You can see how Lebanon works out.0.61
00:15:41.000You can see how politics in the UK is working now, where they've got their all.
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00:17:20.000So much to get into with breaking news out of Iran.
00:17:23.000Here to help us do it is Mike Breast, defense reporter from the Washington Examiner.
00:17:30.000So there's so much to go through, but I want to start with there was an NBC report that says the story behind the story here with the abrupt U-turn on.
00:17:45.000Where they were going to escort some of these groups that have been trapped in the strait for now weeks and weeks and weeks.
00:17:52.000There's 22,000 crewmen or something like that that are just trapped behind there.
00:17:57.000Then rockets start getting shot, missiles start getting shot, and then there was an abrupt pause.
00:18:02.000What is your reporting showing that's actually going on and why that may have happened?
00:18:07.000So it's hard to tell definitively why or what prompted the president's pretty dramatic reversal.
00:18:13.000I mean, it was only earlier that day that both Secretary Hagseth and Secretary Rubio were out in front of the media pretty proudly talking about Project Freedom.
00:18:24.000And so one thing that seems to have been a factor was the U.S. response to how Iran retaliated.
00:18:31.000And so you mentioned that there were some skirmishes between Iranian naval vessels and the U.S. Navy vessels, and they also attacked commercial shipping.
00:18:41.000But the other thing that Iran did was they carried out or Launched drones and missiles towards the UAE, which did impact an oil refinery there.
00:18:50.000And so that seemed to be a big moment because it was the first time since President Trump announced the ceasefire that Iran attacked another Gulf country.
00:18:58.000And then the U.S. went as far to say that that attack, as well as the attacks on the U.S. Navy vessels, did not amount to a breach of the ceasefire or that the ceasefire was still in effect.
00:19:09.000And so it seems like there was consternation among Gulf countries that there was concern that the U.S. Essentially, brushed off the fact that Iran launched drones and missiles specifically targeting the UAE.
00:19:24.000Yeah, so they basically, there's almost like a tale of two wars here, right?0.64
00:19:29.000The Americans and the Israelis were super aggressive, bombing the crap out of just about anything they could find for weeks.0.62
00:19:39.000I have a sense, I mean, this is just a personal feeling, that Trump is probably just ready to put this behind him, wants to chalk it up as a W and move on.
00:19:48.000Meanwhile, when a skirmish breaks out with this Project Freedom, missiles start flying at Gulf partners who've been broadly supportive of the U.S. led efforts in Iran.
00:20:13.000So Trump is kind of stuck between an Iranian rock and an allies in the region hard place.
00:20:20.000I think you're on to something with the fact that it does seem like the signs are pointing towards the president wanting a deal as opposed to restarting aggressive offensive military operations like we saw in the first six weeks of this war.
00:20:33.000And the fact that they didn't consider it a violation of the ceasefire is a demonstration of the fact that.
00:20:39.000They don't want to necessarily restart offensive operations.
00:20:43.000And to take it back to the April 7th announcement from President Trump about the ceasefire, he said in that initial message that it was all contingent upon Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
00:20:55.000That message was sent, or the president's announcement was a month ago today.
00:21:00.000And over the course of the month, Iran hasn't opened the Strait of Hormuz.
00:21:04.000So, by the president's own terms, Iran hasn't lived up to the one main component of the ceasefire agreement.
00:21:12.000Yet the U.S. hasn't carried out military operations or considered the ceasefire null and void, even though that very basic initial principle has not been met.
00:21:24.000Is that like what would have to happen for the U.S. to essentially acknowledge that the ceasefire has been violated and that we're going to resume kinetic activities, strikes on Iran?
00:21:38.000Have you, as you're reporting, any of your sources kind of indicated what that red line might be as we're kind of hunting down this now one page?
00:21:45.000Memorandum before we're going to send our negotiators back over to probably Pakistan to negotiate an actual permanent peace?
00:21:53.000It's hard to tell exactly what the president is thinking as it relates to what would constitute breaking of a red line.
00:22:01.000And part of that is because it does seem like the president has made a decision that he wants to see this wrapped up, especially as the situation with the global economy continues to fight some turmoil.0.61
00:22:14.000And so while the president seems to want to end the war, That all knowing that also gives Iran some leverage.
00:22:21.000And they've, as they've done several times in the past, continue to drag out these negotiations.0.54
00:22:27.000And it's unclear exactly what would have to happen for the president to try and essentially throw away these negotiations for a resumption of military operations.
00:22:37.000But it should also be noted that the U.S. and Iran were negotiating around this time last year prior to the Israel Iran 12 day war.
00:22:47.000And they were negotiating or at least having talks.
00:22:50.000In January, before the start of this conflict.
00:22:53.000And so the most recent iterations of U.S.-Irani negotiations have not gone well and have led to significant military conflicts.
00:23:02.000The question is now: is the president willing to restart those conflicts, especially as we get closer to the midterms and there is little reprieve for the economy?
00:23:52.000How much leverage has that actually given us?
00:23:54.000So, I think the US blockade has been impactful.
00:23:58.000The problem is when it comes to trying to impose economic ramifications.
00:24:04.000On any economy or any country, it doesn't happen overnight.
00:24:08.000And so, while the blockade has worked and there are signs of Iran's already troubled economy struggling even further, it's unclear exactly that they're feeling already the effects of this blockade as opposed to the effects they would feel if the U.S. were to continue this for several months.
00:24:32.000So, basically, the calculation that has to be made is how long is Iran willing to stomach the economic.
00:24:39.000Fallout from this, everybody seems to report, and maybe you would agree, that they have a high threshold for pain.0.50
00:24:46.000So it could just be the stalemate for the near or intermediate future.
00:24:54.000And it feels like that's the point we've come to over the last couple of weeks where the Iranians are particularly set up to handle this type of pain.1.00
00:25:05.000And part of it is the fact that they are not a country that is.0.96
00:25:10.000Seeking to better the lives of the civilians in their country.
00:25:14.000And so they have been able to withstand a tremendous amount of both military and economic pressure to this point.
00:25:22.000And at this point, don't seem ready to crack to US demands either, leading many to believe that they are holding out and can for quite some time.
00:25:33.000So, Mike, one thing that's making it very difficult here so, obviously, we've seen the claims that it was airspace issues that brought an end to this operation.
00:26:00.000But then you also see reports where supposedly the crown prince of Saudi Arabia is egging President Trump on to be tough.
00:26:07.000Are some of these reports just lies, or what is the overall posture of all these middle countries in the Middle East?
00:26:14.000I think a lot of the countries in the Middle East.
00:26:17.000Just like the president, sometimes their opinions fluctuate based on how operations are carried out or the results of them.
00:26:25.000And so there could have been countries that were open to the idea of Project Freedom, but were then turned off to it because they saw the Iranians not only attack commercial and U.S. Navy vessels, but also attack the UAE.
00:26:38.000And I don't think the Gulf countries want to see Iran resume their attacks against them and their infrastructure.0.89
00:26:45.000That being said, the Iranians. have demonstrated the capability and the willingness and the persistence to be able to carry out attacks on Gulf countries.0.86
00:26:56.000So while their position on specific aspects of the conflict may vacillate from week to week, they are now even more clearly than it was pre February 28th when the war began.0.95
00:27:11.000They have now seen and experienced the threat that Iran poses to not just them, but the entire region.0.72
00:27:19.000Well, this is, I mean, it seems like Trump has actually done a fairly good job of consolidating support regionally, and Iran has done a fairly poor job of winning any sympathies by, you know, firing missiles at everybody.
00:27:33.000So, Mike, I want to talk about this peace deal.
00:27:38.000What are the demands of the Trump administration?
00:27:41.000Obviously, no uranium, I would assume, a way to extract it, a way to monitor it.
00:27:49.000What is the broad outline of what they're going for right now?
00:27:52.000So the Trump administration, as it relates to the nuclear front, the Trump administration wants to see Iran agree to effectively end its nuclear program, wants to figure out a way to extract the highly enriched uranium, which is buried deep underground because of the U.S. strikes last year in Operation Midnight Hammer.
00:28:17.000It's unclear exactly where the uranium is, what shape it's in.
00:28:23.000And so, the idea of trying to extract it from deep within Iran is not something that could happen really or easily if the conflict were still ongoing.
00:28:32.000So, that's something that is of a significant priority for the administration.
00:28:37.000And so, they also want to get Iran to agree for some time period that they will refuse or explicitly say they will not pursue uranium enrichment.
00:28:51.000And so, there are reports out there that the Trump administration is seeking.
00:28:57.000There is also reporting that Iran is not willing to agree to that and would be potentially open to a much smaller moratorium, say five years.
00:29:10.000All that being said, the Trump administration, and this is why this deal is really hard to see how it gets across the finish line, the Trump administration hasn't changed their position on almost anything.
00:29:22.000And at the same time, the Iranians have not really, at least publicly, demonstrated a willingness to do that either.
00:29:27.000So at this exact moment, it seems like.
00:29:31.000Neither side has really changed their tune, so to speak, specifically about the nuclear program.
00:29:37.000The administration, over the course of the war, has talked about aspects unrelated to their nuclear program that they also want to see addressed, like Iran's support for proxies in the region, like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.
00:29:50.000And the U.S. also wants to see limits put on Iran's missile capacity and the number of missiles they're allowed to keep at any given time.
00:30:01.000The hard thing is, those are things that.
00:30:05.000The Obama administration determined would make their attempt at a deal too broad and hard to agree upon.
00:30:12.000And it seems like the administration is figuring out some of those challenges now as they're trying to parse through each individual aspect of the deal that they're hoping to achieve.
00:30:21.000So, Mike, one question that does come to mind with this framework is even as you say, there's a lot of obstacles to it, but if it was agreed to, I'm seeing these long term agreements to stop enriching uranium with some form of monitoring for it.
00:30:36.000What would What would set this deal apart?
00:30:38.000What would be the key differences between this proposed deal and the nuclear deal that we got rid of when President Trump was in office the first time?
00:30:46.000So, if the administration has their way, and it's not clear that they will, they do want to see aspects like the missile capacity, funding for proxies to be included in this deal.
00:30:57.000And so that would be a big part of it.
00:30:59.000The president at times has said he does not want to see Iran enrich uranium to any percent or in any way.
00:31:08.000And so that's going to be a really hard.0.59
00:31:12.000Obstacle to tackle because obviously Iran wants to continue their nuclear program, which they say is a civil nuclear program.
00:31:19.000And so, if the U.S. makes the stance that they don't want to see Iran enrich uranium to any level, it's hard to see exactly how they get a deal agreed upon.
00:31:29.000But that would be one area in which a deal would be different than the Obama era Iran deal.
00:31:36.000So, there was a brief mention by President Trump about because all of this really hinges on the fact that we have not seen the regime topple.
00:31:48.000He made mention that they're going to get guns, referring to the Iranian people, that they're going to get armed soon.
00:31:56.000Is there any indication that the Iranian people are ready to take up arms against the regime?
00:32:03.000It's hard to tell exactly, especially because there is the ongoing internet blackout throughout Iran.
00:32:08.000So it's hard to grasp exactly what's going on in the country as it relates to the protests that we saw in late December and early January, which really.
00:32:17.000Was the opening chapter of this now conflict or now war.
00:32:22.000And so it's not exactly clear even who would get the guns or how they would be provided to them.
00:32:28.000And so it's unclear exactly how this will play out or if we will really see a dramatic domestic uprising.
00:32:35.000Yeah, I mean, you've got to imagine with the threats of more murder by the regime against any protests, everything remains in flux.
00:32:44.000But then you have the economic turmoil that's going to be roiling the country increasingly as the blockade continues.
00:32:51.000It does feel like this is a bubbling cauldron that is eventually going to overflow one way or the other.0.64
00:32:57.000And I just, it doesn't seem like the Iranian regime has any sort of rational economic interests.
00:33:03.000They don't, like you mentioned, they don't seem to put the concerns of their people at the forefront.
00:33:07.000They just want to hold on to power and they want to play their leverage against the Trump administration to whatever ends that might come.
00:33:20.000Big picture, what do you predict is going to happen?
00:33:22.000Are they going to get a Peace meeting.
00:33:25.000Do you think that's actually going to get that far where we see another Islamabad negotiation?
00:33:30.000It's hard to tell exactly at this moment.
00:33:33.000The things that I'm watching for are how the president approaches this because ending Project Freedom was essentially a concession to the Iranians without getting anything in return, or at least anything that we can see.
00:33:50.000And so that was a concession from the Trump administration.0.63
00:33:53.000And so Will there be an alternative concession from the Iranians that we just haven't seen yet?0.63
00:34:00.000Or will we see the president agree to make potentially additional concessions if it means getting a deal?0.80
00:34:09.000How much are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness worth to you?
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00:37:20.000The oldest permanent settlement in the United States is the town of St. Augustine, planted by Spanish Catholics on the coastal sands of my home state of Florida.
00:37:29.000Catholic saints were martyred on American soil well over a century before the Revolution began.
00:37:36.000In missions and settlements, wilderness forts, and trading posts stretching from the first colonies to the distant frontier, Catholic explorers, soldiers, priests, and pioneers consecrated this new world to their ancient faith and christened its land.
00:37:53.000Maryland, St. Louis, San Francisco, Santa Fe, almost every region of what is now the United States was first explored and mapped by Catholics.
00:38:04.000So, actually, that was a speech I guess he delivered about a month ago, but nevertheless, it's relevant.
00:38:10.000I wonder if it plays a role in the fact that he's going to meet with the Pope instead of, because here's what's interesting.
00:38:35.000I've spoken with the secretary before he was secretary of state during the campaign about his faith, and he sort of sounds like an evangelical when you're talking to him, but that's great.
00:38:44.000The point is, it's interesting that Vice President Vance is not going.
00:38:48.000Well, I think that, you know, JD not going as the VP, that's.
00:38:53.000May come as an event that you were at, actually, where he was discussing this sort of dust up between the president and Pope Leo, where the VP made some comments when you actually asked him the question.
00:39:08.000And there were, you know, he was saying, well, there's different lanes.
00:39:11.000And he was basically saying that that's a theological lane, a religious lane.
00:40:12.000I mean, you think about foreign diplomacy being about the heads of states meeting or meeting with his counterpart in foreign powers, but the Vatican is essentially a very small plot of land in Italy.
00:40:26.000And, you know, so what are the goals here?
00:40:29.000They're trying to thaw this kind of tension.
00:40:33.000Blake, what do you think are the goals here?
00:40:37.000Well, I think there would be some desire to thaw it because, in general, in American politics, we haven't really had the Pope as a big player.
00:40:46.000But when he has been, there was a little bit of friction with Pope Francis.
00:40:51.000But generally, you know, the Catholics have, devout Catholics in America have been towards the right when the church has played a role.
00:40:58.000It's been on stuff like the life issue.0.70
00:41:02.000And we've never really had this almost feels vaguely medieval bit where you have the Pope sort of frequently saying stuff that is directly at odds with a conservative president.
00:41:25.000Who knows how the president feels because the president is a guy who likes his arguments, his fights, his WWE style mashups.
00:41:33.000But I think they would desire to have a friendlier relationship or at least not a hostile one.
00:41:40.000One angle I'd love to throw in though is let's not forget that this is politics too, that we are in a midterm election.
00:41:46.000And I just pulled up a quick list in Grok here.
00:41:49.000You look at states that have Senate races, that have governor's races that are competitive, that also have high Catholic percentages in terms of the population.
00:41:58.000And we know from 2024 that the Catholic vote was a huge swing vote, many of which overlaps with the Hispanic voting bloc.
00:42:06.000Which is now growing in the southern states.
00:42:08.000You look at places like the Rust Belt, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, which has a Senate and governor's race, high 20%, 25% Catholic population, Ohio, which has a Senate governor's race, Maine has a very high Catholic percentage, which of course has a huge Senate race that's going on that's Planter and Collins, New Hampshire, 25%, Nevada, Texas, 20%.
00:42:28.000So Minnesota, again, like there's just a ton of states.
00:42:31.000And then North Carolina, which doesn't have as high of a Catholic state, but in a state where it's going to be so competitive.
00:42:38.000And so, why make an enemy of the Pope when you're in this huge fight?
00:42:43.000Well, so I want to get your guys' thoughts on the Rubio Vance thing, right?
00:42:47.000There's been a lot of ink spilled, a lot of reporting commentary about who is going to be the heir apparent going into 2028.
00:42:55.000For a while there, JD was running away with it clear as day.
00:42:59.000But Rubio's performance and his skill, even at the White House press briefing room when we took on that new job for a day, I mean, he did a great job.
00:43:10.000Rubio is incredibly effective, like I said, as a communicator.
00:43:44.000So when you look at the polls, JD Vance is by and far still the lead, but there's no question that Rubio has had a slew of headlines in recent days talking about.
00:45:17.000Los Angeles, where drugs aren't all over the street.
00:45:21.000Because they were just in MacArthur Park and they got the raid, and there were like dozens of people just selling drugs in a children's park.
00:45:59.000I mean, he, he, so you had a take, Jack, that.
00:46:02.000You found it fascinating just to see this entrenched liberal Democrat stronghold actually have a voice that's challenging some of their orthodoxy.
00:46:12.000And I remember when we were on, I guess it was last year, and we were on Thought Crime and we did that video of it was like the live stream and we were talking about the debate in New York.
00:46:24.000And it was Mamdani and Curtis Leewa was the candidate.
00:46:29.000But you just didn't see, and I said it at the time Curtis just didn't go all the way in like this with facts.
00:46:36.000With just complete, full on disrespect for what they've done to their own cities and what they were continuing to try to push, where you listen to Spencer Pratt, he's just saying basic things.
00:46:49.000He's saying, This is what's going to happen if you go for a walk in downtown Los Angeles.
00:47:04.000Why go on down there and see if it's, MAGA Republicans that were worried about there.
00:47:09.000In fact, I remember tweeting about this when we were talking about Charlotte, not to bring this up, but on one of the last conversations I had with Charlie was when we, do you remember the Van Jones, right?
00:47:22.000Van Jones was saying like, oh, these, you know, it's people like Charlie Kirk are riling stuff up.
00:47:27.000And I had actually tweeted that, you know, when I'm going on public transit or anyone's going on public transit, they're not looking for, looking out for Charlie Kirks over their shoulder.
00:48:36.000You look at the murder rates, they got so bad that you've got Mayor Richard Reardon in.
00:48:42.000Los Angeles, who massively increased the police force, gets safe, gets gentrified, investment comes in, all these, like, young, upward, you know, these young college educated folks come pouring into the cities.
00:48:55.000They get really nice, and then they forget what happened, and then they reverse the trend.
00:49:01.000Our memories are so short, and the lessons that we had to learn, and we think we're not bound by the lessons of history.
00:49:07.000The same thing, of course, famously happened with Mayor Giuliani in New York, right?
00:49:11.000You get the broken windows theory, they actually start policing, you get stop and frisk.
00:49:15.000And then they turn their back on the very policies that made those cities so successful for really a blip in time, unfortunately.
00:49:24.000And one of the underlying themes here, though, Blake, and we talked about it earlier when we were talking about the Virginia State Senator, Louisa Locke, is this idea that these entrenched communities want to almost allow people that don't agree with us, that shouldn't be voting, to vote.
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00:53:03.000So, the thing about him, you've got to understand, is that he's like a dream come true for the corrupt, failing, Democrat machine in California because he's exactly like Biden, like Kamala Harris, like all these people, just a total career politician.
00:53:22.000He's been doing nothing but 36 years now.
00:53:42.000Then they were onto this guy, Alex Padilla, who's the current.
00:53:46.000Uh, U.S. Senator, one of the two senators for California, they were really hoping for him.
00:53:51.000They thought he decided not to run, and then they were in this terrible scramble where they had all these incredibly weak and embarrassing candidates.
00:54:00.000Swalwell was moving to the top, then he blew up, and then suddenly Becerra just you know started rising in the polls, and you could just feel this sigh of relief from the machine.
00:54:12.000Finally, we got our useless puppet candidate that we wanted all along, and so they're shoving money behind him.
00:54:19.000The unions are getting behind him, but he's exactly what we don't need because he's exactly what's driven California into the situation where we're the worst run state in America with the worst results on everything.
00:55:12.000That Becerra poll, by the way, was put out by a super PAC supporting Becerra, the one that had him leading.
00:55:19.000But there's no doubt that he's moving up.
00:55:22.000And it seems to me what we're seeing happening, we just had a poll actually, which is that you've basically got a very clear top three emerging, which is myself, usually at the top, Becerra, and Tom Steyer.
00:55:35.000And everyone else is, there's a big gap in the.
00:55:37.000Now, between those three of us and everybody else, now on the one hand, you could say that it's good news that I'm leading, I'm happy that I'm leading.
00:55:46.000But if we're not careful because of this ridiculous top two primary system in California, you could eat because Tom Steyer, remember the billionaire climate fanatic, he's already spent 160 million dollars on his campaign, it's by far the most expensive in the country.
00:56:03.000He's already spent that, he's got plenty more where that came from, so you could imagine him.
00:56:09.000You know, pumping up his numbers a little bit, moving up.
00:56:12.000You've got Becerra now really seriously getting the machine, the unions, and all of that.
00:56:18.000And so there's a real possibility that you end up with two Democrats in the top two, Staya and Becerra, which of course is a total disaster for the state.
00:56:27.000So it's very important people in California actually vote.
00:56:30.000The ballots are out, voting has begun.
00:56:33.000And it's, you know, a poll lead like I have doesn't turn into an election win on its own.
00:56:43.000And so Everyone watching and listening, California, you got to vote and you got to vote for me to guarantee that we get a Republican in the top two.
00:56:52.000I mean, you mentioned it on another interview I saw you doing, Steve, that there's more and more that's coming out about just how incompetent Becerra was.
00:57:02.000You guys challenged him on some of these criminal allegations about his chief of staff where they were padding his salary.
00:57:11.000I thought it was a really important moment.
00:57:12.000I'm going to play the clip here now and get your reaction.
00:57:17.000My view is that it's a bit rich for Javier to talk about following the law when he is mired personally in a corruption scandal.
00:57:25.000Steve, I hope you speak as ferociously about Donald Trump's violation of the law every time you're sitting in the governor's office trying to protect the people of California.
00:57:34.000Because the last thing we need is to have an executive who continues to violate the rights of Californians and have a governor who just sits back and agrees with that executive named Donald Trump.
00:57:59.000Literally, it's all they have because the record is indefensible.
00:58:03.000Literally, highest poverty rate in the country, highest unemployment rate in the country, highest cost of living by far, worse than all these measures that matter.
00:58:22.000But just to be really clear about what Becerra did here, I think this is very serious and it could get worse for him.
00:58:30.000When he was hired by Biden as his health secretary, he wanted to take his chief of staff, a guy called Sean McCluskey, with him to Washington.
00:58:39.000The salary paid by the federal government wasn't enough for him.
00:58:43.000He wanted more money, but the federal salary is what it is.
00:58:49.000So what they did was take money from Javier Becerra's California state campaign account.
00:58:56.000They created a payment of $10,000 a month to this consulting firm, one of these lobbying firms in Sacramento, who then passed the money straight on, $10,000 straight out the bank account, to this guy's wife, Sean McCluskey's wife, the chief of staff's wife.
01:00:21.000And the fact that we're not actively criminally prosecuting both of these at this point, and one is now apparently the leading Democrat candidate for governor, is just the irony is too rich to really put into words.
01:00:37.000Could I just give you one other thing?
01:00:38.000This is a story that we uncovered and published yesterday through Cal Doge, part of my campaign, California Department of Government Efficiency.
01:00:46.000We've been publishing a number of fraud reports this year.
01:00:50.000The one yesterday, directly involving Becerra, on April the 13th this year, this organization, which became notorious during the LA anti ICE riots last year, CHIRLA, C H I R L A, CHIRLA, they are an organization, an immigrant rights organization.
01:01:09.000They do legal defense for some of the worst criminals that are being deported, amongst other things.
01:02:54.000I'm a legal immigrant and Americans support immigration when it is properly controlled.
01:03:01.000And what we saw under the Biden administration, open borders, undermined everybody's support for immigration.
01:03:08.000And as governor, I've made it very clear, although it is the federal government's responsibility to determine and implement immigration policy, I think it's important that all the laws are peacefully enforced.
01:03:21.000And as governor, I would make sure that we work with the federal government to enforce our law.0.96
01:03:28.000I mean, I'd go full immigration moratorium, but that's just me.0.99
01:03:31.000Steve, you got to do you in California.0.99
01:03:33.000All right, Steve, we have breaking news on the Palisades fire.
01:03:38.000The guy who did it, Jonathan Kinderdneck, turns out he's a Luigi Mangione obsessed fan, and he's a far leftist that just basically ruined hundreds of thousands of people's lives.
01:03:50.000And Spencer Pratt is one of them who's running for mayor.
01:03:55.000What is your assessment, your reaction to finding out this news about Jonathan Kinderdneck?
01:04:02.000Well, it's just so infuriating because, as with so many other things in California, it shows you that these disasters and the massive costs, and this is the most expensive disaster in California history, are totally avoidable, totally avoidable.
01:04:18.000And the specific on this fire, everyone needs to remember, which is that it was started on purpose and it was not, it was then, it was called the Lockman Fire and it was a week before the Palisades Fire and then it was put out, but not fully.
01:04:36.000And the reason, and we now know this from internal documents from the fire department, was that they were specifically asking and wanting to bulldoze the area where the fire had been extinguished in order to make sure it was properly extinguished.
01:04:52.000But then they didn't do that because there was an endangered plant that they were supposed to protect and they didn't want to bulldoze the area.
01:05:02.000That left the fire smoldering, which reignited and created the Palisades fire.
01:05:11.000Most of the fires in Southern California, there's a very big difference between the kind of wildfires you get in Southern California and the ones that you get in the Sierra Nevada and the big forests in the northern parts of the state.
01:05:23.000In Southern California, most of the fires are started by humans, either by arsonists or by homeless encampments.
01:06:36.000This is not a famous part of the dystopian scene in Los Angeles.
01:06:42.000It's just as if it was a set for a movie.
01:06:45.000Capturing some dystopian future, some horrific scene.
01:06:49.000And there's just block after block of total chaos.
01:06:53.000And, you know, that one time I was there walking through, there was a porter potty that was clearly being used as the main sort of toilet there, just suddenly burst into flames while I was there.
01:07:07.000Just the chaos and lawlessness in America's second city.
01:07:18.000Is doing really well and getting a lot of buzz and energy and attention in LA.
01:07:23.000He was completely dismissed, but he's getting all the energy because people are sick of it in LA in particular, especially Democrats.
01:07:31.000So, not just Republicans, you have Democrats who're saying, yeah, whatever, but we can't go on like this.
01:07:36.000I'm not a Republican, but we need a change.
01:07:38.000Well, and there's another story that I've been recently reading about that I think really also captures the profound decay, along with arson, along with the homelessness.
01:08:03.000And what's going on is you have criminals are stripping copper wiring from streetlights, they're stripping it from major bridges.
01:08:11.000And this is a really destructive crime because they'll get $10, you know, if they get $100 of scrap metal, it costs $10,000 or $50,000 to replace it.
01:08:21.000And then they can still go steal it again.
01:08:23.000And it's known how we could stop these things.
01:08:26.000You just have to make really severe penalties.
01:08:54.000And they won't do it, they won't clamp down on it.
01:08:56.000Another one catalytic converters, massive spree of thefts from cars.
01:09:01.000And funny enough, Nitya Raman, the third person running for mayor, was even more to the left of Karen Bass, as she's a member of the LA City Council.
01:09:11.000When the catalytic converter thefts really started accelerating a couple of years ago, she starts blaming the car companies for not making them more secure.
01:09:21.000And then you look at the streetlights, there's another reason they're not fixing the streetlights because they passed this law.
01:09:27.000About what they call street diets, where if you try and fix, if you try and upgrade or improve or do anything to a street, you're now required to convert it into make the streets narrower, to slow down traffic, put speed bumps in there, all this stuff to get, because they hate cars, they hate people driving, put in bike lanes.
01:09:49.000So their own law that they put in to make street diets mandatory is now stopping them from fixing the street lights.