transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] And we continue at 1.05 in the afternoon on The John Phillips Show. Mr. Randy Wangs in Culver City.

Speaker 2:
[00:07] John, after last night's debate, which was hosted on Nextar Stations, including KTLA 5, Fox 40 in Sacramento, and Cron 4 in the Bay, Cron 4 put out a poll asking people, you watched the debate, who's getting your vote? So who won the debate according to poll respondents? 46% of respondents who watched that debate on Cron 4's website said they like Mahan.

Speaker 1:
[00:35] Mahan did an excellent job at that debate. There's no disputing that.

Speaker 2:
[00:40] In second place, it's Hilton at 15%, then Steyer at 12, then Becerra at 11, Katie Porter at 8, Chad Bianco at 6, and Undecided at 2.

Speaker 1:
[00:57] It's interesting that Becerra didn't finish dead last because everyone that I talked to, Republican and Democrat, certainly felt that way.

Speaker 2:
[01:07] Scrub it.

Speaker 1:
[01:10] And by the way, we know that Nancy Pelosi hates Javier Becerra. And when he was named by the Biden administration to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, or Grampy Joe, go ahead and correct me here.

Speaker 2:
[01:26] Yeah. What is his actual position, Joe?

Speaker 3:
[01:28] For Secretary of Health and Education Service, I nominate Javier Becerra.

Speaker 1:
[01:36] And Nancy Pelosi was furious that no one called her and asked her about Javier Becerra before they did that. Well, we finally found out what it was that he did, and how much he had offended her so much.

Speaker 2:
[01:51] Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[01:53] And this is a Politico article that goes all the way back to 2009. Here is what Politico reported. California Democrat Javier Becerra has learned a lesson about calling out Nancy Pelosi. Don't. In the run up to this month's House vote on health care reform, Becerra suggested to the Congressional Progressive Caucus that party leaders gave up too easily on the favored robust public option. That didn't sit well with the speaker and witnesses said she made her displeasure known to Becerra and other top Democrats at a subsequent leadership meeting. Quote, I understand. I have tire tracks on my back because Javier threw me under the bus. Whoa, that's what Pelosi was quoted as saying. The speaker went on to accuse Becerra of trying to improve his quote street cred with progressives by undercutting her.

Speaker 4:
[02:55] Quite frankly.

Speaker 1:
[02:57] Becerra was back on the hot seat on Monday when Pelosi demanded to know why seven members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus had voted for the anti-abortion Stupak Amendment before final passage of the health care bill. Even after she had acceded to the CHC's wishes in preventing an immigration amendment from being considered on the floor. Becerra, a former CHC chairman, expressed surprise at the number and replied that he had tried to turn the votes of two Latino lawmakers he knew would vote against her, according to sources familiar with the exchange.

Speaker 4:
[03:35] But when you do the scrub.

Speaker 1:
[03:37] Attendees of Monday's meeting drew different inferences from Pelosi's line of questioning, with one group saying it is a second rebuke of Becerra and another portraying it as the speaker simply asking the member of leadership with the strongest connection to the CHC what he knew about a vote that irritated her.

Speaker 3:
[03:58] We love everybody.

Speaker 1:
[04:00] Pelosi, who used to keep a favor file for her father, the former mayor of Baltimore, clearly has a mental list of those who wronged her as she tried to collect votes for the centerpiece of the Democrats' domestic agenda. That Becerra caught her eye and her eye-er is noteworthy because he is a protege of Pelosi's who won the post of caucus vice-chairman in large part on the strength of her camp support. Becerra declined to comment directly when asked about Pelosi's harsh treatment. Looking startled by the question, Becerra paused, grinned, walked away and called out, quote, it was a good vote, referring to the eventual 2020 to 2015 tally on health care as he ducked into a Democratic caucus meeting. So Nancy Pelosi has had it in for him since 2009.

Speaker 2:
[05:03] And she told the Biden people, don't put him in there. It's not going to go well. And it didn't go well. We also know that the debate didn't go well for Becerra last night because Becerra was the only candidate who didn't show up to the spin room afterwards.

Speaker 1:
[05:20] What do they call that? Sicilian amnesia were the only thing that you remember are people who wronged you? Scrub it. And Nancy hasn't forgotten. All right. It is our pleasure to welcome our next guest to the program. He is a candidate for the United States Congress. This is a district that includes Hollywood, Burbank, Glendale, and the mid Wilshire portion of Los Angeles. The incumbent in that district is Democrat Laura Friedman. Our guest is one of her Republican challengers, Scott Meyers. You can follow him on X at Scott A Meyers LA. Scott Meyers, welcome.

Speaker 5:
[06:03] Thank you so much, John and Randy, for having me on the most entertaining show. I take my headphones to lunch every weekday and I disappear listening to your show every day. I eat alone for that reason, but thank you for having me.

Speaker 1:
[06:19] Well, thanks so much for stopping by. So let's start out with the first and the obvious question, why should you be the next congressman from Glendale?

Speaker 5:
[06:28] Because we need a return to common sense on all issues. I was at the Steve Hilton event on Sunday, the rally on Sunday, a man asked me, what issues are there, Mr. Meyers? I said to him, I was perplexed and I said, what issues aren't there? You know, the state, the county, the city is broke. The roads are broken, the freeways are broken. The homelessness is not getting any better. We're wasting all this money. There's no transparency. We have a social agenda that's so dangerous to children and grown women. And Laura Friedman is on the wrong side of all of those issues. You know, she was the chair of the Transportation Committee for four years as an Assemblywoman until she went into Congress. That bullet train went up two, three, four fold in projected cost. She was the chair. We're now at $128 billion or $126 billion projected completion cost. If you buy a ticket from LAX to San Francisco in time, you can buy that ticket for $126 or less. It is equal to a billion plane tickets. This is insane. And we need to cut federal funding on so many projects that are wasting our money in this state.

Speaker 1:
[08:03] And this is a district that historically elected Republicans. Jim Rogan, who was famously part of the impeachment team of Bill Clinton represented this district when he was in the House of Representatives. And certainly the Burbank and Glendale and Hollywood of yesteryear looked very different back then than the Burbank, Glendale and Hollywood of today. It used to be cleaner, it used to be safer, it used to be more affordable, and now it's headed in the wrong direction.

Speaker 5:
[08:37] Well, most of the district is actually in the city of Los Angeles. And that has become a city that for whatever reason, and I know I have my suspicions as to the reasons, but it has become an extremely left wing city. Look who's being elected there. I was one of the five proponents of the Nithya Ramon recall in 2021. We were watching her from the time that she was campaigning, and we were trying to warn people, this is not a Democrat, this is a Marxist. You look at the DSA Democratic Socialist of America website, you will find recommended reading list, including the autobiography of Angela Davis, the Communist Manifesto, Saul Alinsky book, Rules for Radicals, and now the new one, Abolish Rent, a book that advocates the abolishing of all rent. These people want government takeover of apartments. They want, it's not just corporate landlords that are their enemy, it's any land owner. That is obviously a target of these people on the far left. Laura Friedman, she advocated, she supported the re-election of George Gascon. She was one of the assembly women voting for this bill, the Scott Weiner bill a number of years ago. I think it might have been her first term, to reduce surreptitious HIV transmission from a felony to a mere misdemeanor. She's all in on the genital scrambling of minor children and boys competing against girls. She's against voter ID. Now, one thing that, for people that don't know district 30, they certainly know the name of Adam Schiff. This is the district that was formally represented by Adam Schiff before he went to the Senate. Now, he was a liberal Democrat, but he wasn't a radical Democrat. And I don't think that people understand in this district, I don't think people understand how radical this woman is, especially in those parts of the district. Glendale Burbank, Sondland Dehunga, all the way up just before Palmdale, believe it or not. And I think that discussion has to be had. They have to know who this woman is. She is not Adam Schiff, fine. They're Democrats, fine. But they don't realize that she is almost seamless, almost seamless with the DSA.

Speaker 1:
[11:19] If I'm not mistaken, and correct me if I'm wrong, when she was on the City Council in Glendale, one of the issues that she took up were road diets, which is the theory that if you eliminate lanes of traffic, people will be forced to ride their bicycle to work, or they'll be forced to ride the bus to work, or walk to work, or do something other than ride in their car to work, because you're going to create all of these artificial choke points, these artificial congestion that'll make it so much of a pain in the ass to commute by car to work, that you're going to be begging for alternatives that you can certainly use to get to wherever it is that you need to go. And if I'm also not mistaken, when she was in the state legislature, she launched the War on Grass, where she didn't want grass to be used in places like HOAs or commercial property or alongside freeways, those sorts of things. She wanted to get rid of it.

Speaker 5:
[12:21] She's, yeah, well, she's known as the bike lady of Glendale, who's never seen, who's never seen on her bike. You know, this is, again, this is where she's seen this with the DSA. They want, I think, I think it's pretty clear. Anybody really watching is that the, the socialist want single family homes gone. They want the nuclear family gone. You'll actually find that on some of their writings. They think it's a, it's a racist construct, as though people all over the world don't have nuclear families. This, she's, these, these policies that she instituted in Glendale are not popular in Glendale. And they also have their sites set on Olive Avenue in Burbank. Watch out for Burbank. Burbank may go the way of LA and Santa Monica after November. They want to make Olive Avenue a single lane, all the way up to Glen Oaks, starting from just, just about a quarter, half a mile from Alameda, all the way through downtown Burbank, a single lane and making it a dedicated bus lane for buses that aren't going to have anybody on it. Nobody wants to take the bus. They keep on wanting us to take the bus. I used to take the train from the Hollywood and Vine station to the courthouse. I'm a lawyer. The red line. I was in a suit and I had a briefcase. There's no way I'm doing that now. It's filthy. It's dangerous and filthy. They want us to be back on these buses and trains, but no one in their right mind who knows anything is going to take their family on these types of rail.

Speaker 1:
[14:20] It seems to me like their idea of equity, and they spend a lot of time talking about equity and inclusion and those things. But their idea of equity, when you look at a map of the county of Los Angeles, and you see the city of Los Angeles as the behemoth in the county, the largest city in the county, the largest city in the state, and it does not function in any realistic way. The smaller independent cities do function. People who live in Burbank like it. People who live in Glendale like it. People who live in independent cities in Orange County, they like it. But the idea of equity that people like Laura Friedman have is to take Burbank and Glendale and make them more like Los Angeles as opposed to making Los Angeles more like Burbank and Glendale and like the cities that actually function.

Speaker 5:
[15:14] Absolutely. There's a, there's, this is, this is happening in, in, in Burbank. There's the far left and they're fighting the moderates who have a slogan saying, keep, keep Burbank, Burbank or yeah, don't LA my Burbank. They, Burbank's a jewel compared to LA. Glendale's a jewel compared to LA. We don't have, we don't have encampments here. Well, why is that? I mean, it's similarly affordable to Los Angeles, Glendale and Burbank. Why are there no encampments here? Why are there no encampments in extremely unaffordable Beverly Hills? Last night's debate, it was all about class warfare. They wanted to make it seem like people are in a tent because they can't afford the price that a greedy landlord is daring to charge, the market price. This is what they are doing. And we in LA, I live in the city of LA. I don't know anybody that doesn't want to live in a city that's not a jewel. I want LA to be a jewel. If it was a jewel, well, housing would be a lot more expensive. But because it's such a squalid place right now with every road broken and the city budget broken, with a $50 billion lawsuit coming down the pike because of the Palisades fire, I don't know how we're going to get through that. We're going to have to have federal money. And that's where I come in. Laura Friedman, all she does is bash Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. Well, you're not going to get anywhere with that guy. If you're going to bash him, you'd need to work with him. And we need someone who can bring in federal money because the city's budget is only about $13 billion a year. How are we going to get $50 billion? And that's just the early price tag for LA's responsibility over the Palisades fire. When I hear equity, my antenna goes up because it's a hidden word. It really means something else. It really means taking money from people who have earned it and giving it to people who have their hand out. And there's just too much of that in the city of Los Angeles, and it's too much in the psyche of our young people. Big Daddy government should take care of me. Big Daddy government should be giving me an apartment at a price that I can afford. No, that's just not how it works. You have a homeless person who comes from whatever, Iowa and pitches a tent on Sunset and Gower. And so why is it that we feel the need to give him a free apartment? Is that how things work? That's never how things work in this country. You find me in your proximity and now you owe me a home. But this is the mentality that is infiltrated. The average voter, it all sounds great. And when they hear the word, when they hear finances, they just turn their head away. They can't absorb that. Everyone's throwing around comments of billions of dollars and hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars. And I think people just turn away from that because they just don't know how to process it all. They think it's all gonna be paid for somehow. But we've paid for this, we've financed this homeless problem. And everything has come out of other budgets. The Bureau of Sanitation, Street Services, the police, fire. If you look at the city budget, there's no pie, there's no piece of pie in that pie chart for homeless, homeless spending. It comes from other, from all other agencies. And we are, everything is broken partially, in large part because we have taken so much money from all these other departments and finance these non-governmental organizations, these very profitable non-profits, and the city is a wreck, so that's got to stop. And we've been, and the federal government has jurisdiction over this. We give money to the city, we give money to our education department, we can enforce ADA rules on our sidewalks. We can, we can say, hey, you can't put an encampment here because the disabled people need to get, you know, it's in violation of ADA rules. Well, the city is not...

Speaker 1:
[19:48] No question about it, Scott. We're going to have to leave it there. I'm out of time. Scott Alan Meyers, candidate for Congress in a district that encompasses Hollywood, Burbank, Glendale and Mid-Wilshire. If you want more information, you can follow Scott on X at Scott A. Meyers, LA. Scott Alan Meyers, thanks so much for stopping by.

Speaker 5:
[20:08] Thank you so much, guys.

Speaker 1:
[20:12] 800-222-5222 is telephone number 1-800-222-5222. If you'd like to email the show, you can do so at johnnydontlikeshow.gmail.com. That's johnnydontlikeshow.gmail.com. And Randy, now that we've crossed the halfway point of today's show, if you want to continue listening to us after we sign off at 3, that's easy to do.

Speaker 2:
[20:35] All you got to do is search for The John Phillips Show wherever you get your podcast. Now, that could be the Apple Podcast app. That could be iHeartRadio. That could be Spotify. Search for The John Phillips Show. Hit subscribe. You could download all the episodes. You could do a Google on the YouTube. You could get the free KABC app, the free KSFO app, or that KMJ Now app, because we're on the big KMJ in Fresno Saturdays at noon. There are so many different ways to listen live to this Noon to 3 show wherever you are because of streaming. And download all the podcasts whenever you want to listen to them. Maybe you want to go back and listen to us cover every candidate trudging their way through the Tijuana River.

Speaker 1:
[21:17] And you can literally see it, smell it, and feel it.

Speaker 6:
[21:25] You can smell it right here.

Speaker 1:
[21:27] All right, let's go back to last night's gubernatorial debate on Nextar.

Speaker 2:
[21:32] Now, this was interesting because this is probably the most interesting part of the debate was when the moderators at Nextar asked what we call in the business now the Zavala question. And that is, how would you grade current governor Gavin Newsom on homelessness? I think you know how the two Republicans are going to answer, but how the other four candidates' answer is interesting.

Speaker 1:
[22:01] Frank.

Speaker 7:
[22:02] Our next question tonight is about an issue we all see every day in California homelessness.

Speaker 2:
[22:07] In fact, you can't just see it.

Speaker 6:
[22:09] You can smell it right here.

Speaker 1:
[22:14] And not just there, you can smell it all over.

Speaker 2:
[22:17] Can't help myself sometimes. Frank.

Speaker 7:
[22:19] Our next question tonight is about an issue we all see every day in California homelessness. There are 187,000 people experiencing homelessness in the state right now. In a recent Inside California Politics poll, 86% of those surveyed believe the homeless problem has stayed the same or is getting worse.

Speaker 2:
[22:40] Wait, Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom said it was getting better.

Speaker 1:
[22:45] And it was her top priority.

Speaker 2:
[22:47] And Gavin's.

Speaker 5:
[22:49] It's not a namzy-pamsy thing.

Speaker 2:
[22:50] Do you remember Gavin Newsom in 2019, his entire state of the state was nothing but homelessness?

Speaker 1:
[22:59] How'd that work out for us?

Speaker 2:
[23:01] Not great.

Speaker 7:
[23:01] We want to ask a question about Governor Newsom's performance on homelessness. What letter grade would you give him on handling the issue? And what, if anything, would you do differently? Ms. Porter, we're going to begin with you. You recently gave the governor a solid A-.

Speaker 1:
[23:19] Good Lord.

Speaker 2:
[23:21] And by the way, all the grades that they're quoting, that's from the interviews with Zavala.

Speaker 7:
[23:25] When it comes to his overall job performance, what grade would you give him on homelessness? And what, if anything, would you do differently? You have 60 seconds.

Speaker 6:
[23:34] I'm a notoriously tough grader, but I would probably give him a B on homelessness.

Speaker 1:
[23:39] Talk about grade inflation.

Speaker 6:
[23:43] I don't think this has been an easy problem to solve, but I do give him a lot of credit for calling attention to the problem.

Speaker 2:
[23:49] When he campaigned eight, you give him credit for bringing awareness to the thing that we see on our streets every day.

Speaker 1:
[23:57] Yeah, we don't need a guy in a suit telling us that there are bums on every corner.

Speaker 6:
[24:01] I don't think this has been an easy problem to solve, but I do give him a lot of credit for calling attention to the problem. When he campaigned eight years ago, he was talking about housing when nobody else was. Our homelessness problem is a direct correlate of our housing problems.

Speaker 2:
[24:15] We're not going to solve homelessness without bringing down the cost of housing.

Speaker 1:
[24:18] That's why housing has been my number one issue.

Speaker 2:
[24:20] She is so out to lunch on this, and I'm sorry to use a food reference, but you get the idea.

Speaker 6:
[24:24] It is not a food reference, it is a direct correlation of our housing problems. I mean, we're not going to solve homelessness without bringing down the cost of housing. That's why housing has been my number one issue.

Speaker 2:
[24:34] Here we go.

Speaker 1:
[24:36] She is so out to lunch on this, and I'm sorry to use a food reference, but you get the idea. It is not a high cost of housing issue. People have scrambled their brains on drugs and they cannot function. They are addicts, they are mentally ill, and that's why they can't play nice in the sandbox. And for the life of me, I cannot figure out outside of taking money from developers, why in the world so many politicians purposely put their head in the sand and claim it's a housing issue, when all you have to do is open your eyes to realize it's not.

Speaker 2:
[25:16] Katie Porter lives in Irvine. There are currently 827 homes for sale in Irvine. They're not cheap, but there's plenty of them.

Speaker 1:
[25:28] Doesn't seem like a lack of housing to me.

Speaker 2:
[25:31] Actually, you know what's pissing me off? A lot of these are cheaper than the freaking valley. Irvine's nice. I mean, it's boring, but it's nice. The valley's boring and it's not nice.

Speaker 6:
[25:46] It's the day I launched this race over a year ago. What I would do differently than Governor Newsom is fund homelessness prevention.

Speaker 2:
[25:54] And every study that we have on homelessness prevention, which is rental subsidies, has shown that there's not really a lot of outcome for that as well.

Speaker 1:
[26:03] No, if you are frying your brains on drugs, sure the government can pay your rent while you destroy your unit and they can prolong the agony, but you can't delay it forever. If someone's life is a mess, you need to fix the fundamental problem.

Speaker 6:
[26:22] It is so much more cost-effective and so much more humane to prevent families from becoming homeless in the first place.

Speaker 2:
[26:29] This is a way to not address the current people that are on the street by saying, well, we're going to prevent the next generation. It's like, okay, you have all these gang bangers on the street that are in high school. Well, instead of dealing with them, we're going to make sure we have pre-K so the next generation won't become gang bangers.

Speaker 1:
[26:46] Yeah, it's a nice way to dodge the problem.

Speaker 6:
[26:48] And making sure that if they do lose their home, that they're able to land in an interim housing or shelter situation. We can't solve this problem because the problem keeps getting worse. For every person we put into permanent supportive housing, somebody else loses their home and takes their place.

Speaker 2:
[27:03] This is the other thing. No, no, no, these programs all work. There's just so many people falling into homelessness that we can't catch up.

Speaker 1:
[27:11] How about this? Why don't we put them all in subsidized housing over at UCI? I'm sure that Katie would love her new neighbors when they come over in a nice sundress with a casserole knocking on her front door asking if they could borrow a cup of math.

Speaker 6:
[27:28] That's why Californians don't feel like we're making progress despite spending significant money.

Speaker 7:
[27:33] Ms. Porter, thank you very much. Mr. Mahan.

Speaker 2:
[27:34] That was a terrible answer.

Speaker 1:
[27:39] It's what she thinks though, and it's why she would be a complete train wreck as a governor of the state.

Speaker 7:
[27:45] Ms. Porter, thank you very much. Mr. Mahan, you've given Governor News some grades ranging from A to D depending on the issue. What grade would you give him on homelessness and what, if anything, would you do differently? You have 60 seconds.

Speaker 8:
[27:58] Well, Frank, look, the assessment does depend on the issue, and I'm going to leave the letter grades to you and all the pundits out there. Let me tell you what we've done.

Speaker 2:
[28:05] I'll just say the letter.

Speaker 1:
[28:08] He doesn't want to seem critical of Gavin Newsom at this stage of the game because he understands the Democrats don't regard him as one of them, which means he has to soften the blow and he has to sand off the rough edges.

Speaker 8:
[28:26] Let me tell you what we've done in San Jose because we've created a model for the rest of the state. We've increased trust in local government by 40% primarily because we have moved thousands of people. You know what?

Speaker 1:
[28:37] This answer is why he's not doing well. This is exactly what Rick Caruso did because you hear the question, you know who the person is and you know that they understand the right answer, but they won't give it because their strategist told them not to. They're holding their punches and they're denying reality and they're trying to soften a blow that shouldn't be softened. People need to wake up in this state and realize that what we're doing is not working and he understands that. Katie Porter is out to lunch. Katie Porter doesn't know any better. This guy knows better and for someone who knows better, who's going to give this answer and try to make Gavin Newsom look better than he actually is, is why he's not getting any Republican crossover votes. This is why Republicans are going to vote for one of the two Republicans and not him. And it's also part of why Democrats aren't voting for him in the sense that he's obviously giving an inauthentic answer. You know that over a couple of drinks in a bar, if you were to ask him how did Galvin Newsom do on homelessness, he would rip him 15 ways from Sunday, but he's not going to do it in the debate. This is a dishonest answer.

Speaker 8:
[30:02] We have moved thousands of people indoors. I had to take on the establishment within my own party to change the way we were spending our money. We were spending a million dollars a door and taking years to build alternatives to the streets. Instead, we built basic, dignified shelter, invested in prevention. And when shelter was available, we required that people come indoors. We've reduced unsheltered homelessness in San Jose by nearly one-third over the last four years. That's why trusting government in San Jose has increased. That's why fewer people are outdoors. It's part of the reason that our streets are safer and cleaner. I'm proud of what we've done. All demand results from every city and every county in California as governor.

Speaker 2:
[30:45] You won't just mean-girl them the way that Gavin says that he won't ever directly challenge LA County who opposes every single one of his executive orders for homelessness, but he'll never call out Holly Mitchell by name.

Speaker 1:
[30:59] No, but he goes after Huntington Beach like it's Texas.

Speaker 7:
[31:03] I'd like to clarify and ask you one more time to give a letter grade to help voters understand.

Speaker 2:
[31:07] The moderators came out looking the best at anybody. Yeah, they did a good job.

Speaker 1:
[31:13] Nicky Lorenzo, I'm more familiar with her than Frank Buckley, but Nicky Lorenzo is first class.

Speaker 2:
[31:19] Nicky Lorenzo hosts Inside California Politics and she's the anchor on Fox 40. She is great. Frank Buckley is one of the morning anchors on KTLA 5.

Speaker 7:
[31:27] I'd like to clarify and ask you one more time to give a letter grade to help voters understand your assessment of Governor Newsom's job on this issue. You have 15 seconds.

Speaker 8:
[31:36] All right, Frank, since you insisted, look, I'll give him a B on Carecourt and Prop 1 and many of the important initiatives that he championed, where I've been proud to stand with him. I'm going to give us all though a D on implementation. San Jose has led the way.

Speaker 2:
[31:54] You should have started with that, dude.

Speaker 1:
[31:56] Yeah, no kidding.

Speaker 8:
[31:58] Few other places have, but we have not delivered the results people deserve.

Speaker 7:
[32:02] Thank you very much for the letter grades.

Speaker 1:
[32:03] Mr. Becerra, we have, oh boy, scrub a dub dub scrub it 800-222-5222 is telephone number 1-800-222-5222. Right now we're going through the sound of last night's gubernatorial debate hosted by Nxtar.

Speaker 2:
[32:24] We are listening to all the candidates being asked to give a letter grade to Gavin Newsom's performance on homelessness and it's time for the candidate everyone was curious about because he was surging in the polls, scrub a dub dub.

Speaker 4:
[32:38] But when you do the scrub.

Speaker 2:
[32:39] Javier Becerra, how would you grade Gavin Newsom on his performance on homelessness?

Speaker 7:
[32:46] Thank you very much for the letter grades. Mr. Becerra, we haven't seen you issue a letter grade on Governor Newsom's overall performance.

Speaker 2:
[32:54] Which by the way, he's going on with Zavala this Sunday. So that should be a fun interview.

Speaker 1:
[32:59] Wait, Baccaria is?

Speaker 2:
[33:00] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[33:01] Oh, that's going to be crash and burn.

Speaker 2:
[33:03] Oh, boy. And she always posts on the YouTube page for KCRA, the full 30 minute unedited interview. I can't wait. That's my meal prep show.

Speaker 7:
[33:14] What grade does he get on homelessness? And what, if anything, would you do differently? You have 60 seconds.

Speaker 4:
[33:20] Frank, I would say that the governor has made efforts. We've seen him come down to Los Angeles, actually go out and try to clean some of the streets.

Speaker 2:
[33:28] That was a stunt.

Speaker 1:
[33:36] A literal photo op.

Speaker 4:
[33:39] Frank, I would say that the governor has made efforts. We've seen him come down to Los Angeles, actually go out and try to clean some of the streets.

Speaker 2:
[33:48] It used to be his thing when he was pissed off at a mayor, so he would clean up LA and make Garcetti go with him, or he'd clean up Oakland and make Sheng go with him.

Speaker 1:
[33:57] That's what he would do to punish Sheng.

Speaker 4:
[34:01] On effort, I would give him an A.

Speaker 1:
[34:04] Oh, come on.

Speaker 4:
[34:08] On effort, I would give him an A. Here's what I would do that's different, though. I would focus on accountability.

Speaker 1:
[34:20] He is the emptiest of all of the empty suits.

Speaker 2:
[34:27] Regardless of what your politics are, it is obvious that he was the worst candidate on that stage.

Speaker 7:
[34:34] Accountability, accountability, accountability.

Speaker 1:
[34:37] Not only did he come across as being ill-informed, he came across as just being dim in general.

Speaker 2:
[34:45] That's the general consensus. How he's made it this far, nobody knows. Why Jerry Brown appointed him to be AG, nobody knows. Why Biden appointed him to be the Health and Education Secretary, nobody knows.

Speaker 1:
[35:00] Well, what's so strange to me is that you look at Nancy Pelosi and you see a rich lady, you see a rich socialite with the makeup, the hair, the jewelry, the clothes. But if you take off the makeup, the hair, the jewelry, the clothes, what you have is a D'Alessandro. What you have is a machine politician, an old-timing machine politician, someone you don't cross. He crossed her, Becerra crossed her, and she runs this state with an iron fist. What do they call it? An iron fist wrapped in a Gucci glove? And even though he's on the wrong side of her, for whatever reason, this guy is just a cat with nine lives who keeps getting life vest after life vest after life vest when his career should be over. They keep pushing him along, and I don't understand it at all. It's not like he's a Mensa member.

Speaker 4:
[36:04] I would make sure if we're sending billions of dollars down to the local communities, to our cities and our counties, that we would demand accountability for the dollar that we're going to give them.

Speaker 2:
[36:14] Cliche!

Speaker 4:
[36:17] We need to see results, and results are what you see on the streets. We need to pull folks up, help get them back on their feet, and that's what I would do. But what I will tell you is my principal job as governor, and I'm glad to hear other people are saying this is I'm going to keep you housed. If you are in a home right now, renting or owning, if you lose your job unexpectedly, or you have a medical emergency, and now you're about to become homeless as a result of that now unaffordable expense, tell me what you need. How can I help you keep your home?

Speaker 2:
[36:45] How long are we going to subsidize people's rent when they can't pay?

Speaker 1:
[36:50] Well, I'm sure from his point of view, forever.

Speaker 4:
[36:52] Because it cost me so much more money to pick you off off the streets, provide you with the assistance in the shelter than it does to keep you in the home that you're already paid for.

Speaker 2:
[37:02] That was a uniquely terrible answer.

Speaker 1:
[37:05] Gavin Newsom gets an A on homelessness according to this dope.

Speaker 7:
[37:10] Mr. Visera, let me ask you a follow up question. You're saying that anyone who needs housing assistance, you will help them. That means the government will help them. How much is that going to cost? And where does that money come from? You have 30 seconds.

Speaker 4:
[37:23] Yeah, Frank, we spend billions, tens of billions of dollars right now to try to pull people off the streets. Do you think it's working? It would cost us a fraction.

Speaker 2:
[37:30] You just gave Gavin an A.

Speaker 1:
[37:32] Yeah. Justify your letter grade then, bud.

Speaker 4:
[37:36] It would cost us a fraction of that amount to help someone who temporarily lost their job stay in the home. If they for two or three months fall behind on the rent, they don't get kicked out because we'll try to...

Speaker 2:
[37:46] That's not the people on the streets. People like that, they either move, they sleep on a friend's couch or they leave the state. The people that are on the streets are either crazy on drugs or both.

Speaker 1:
[38:00] This debate could produce the worst-case scenario for the Democrats because if it's universally understood that Mahan did the best and that Becerra did the worst, you're going to have one of your top three fall a few points in Becerra and you're going to have one of your single-digit candidates move up a few points. And that leaves the Democrats exactly where they were when two Republicans finished in first and second.

Speaker 4:
[38:29] They don't get kicked out because people try to support them. Zero interest loan. You can keep them in their home. I save a lot more money by keeping them in the house than watch them hit the streets and then try to find them and pick them up. Far more expensive.

Speaker 7:
[38:42] Mr. Becerra, thank you.

Speaker 1:
[38:43] Oh boy. The Democratic Party needed him to have a very good day and that they didn't get.