So poor old Jerry Dyer. Gavin Newsom just seems like he's not keeping his
promises. It's good, old Jerry. He told the City of Fresno in
twenty twenty two, in the bumper days of twenty twenty two, we're gonna
give two hundred and fifty million dollars of state funding to the City of Fresno.
It's gonna help support all this downtown development and infrastructure stuff, so that
maybe we could have ten thousand more people living in downtown, the grand downtown
revitalization that we've been talking about here in Fresno for the last twenty plus years.
So in twenty twenty two, we get that first fifty million flush with
all this COVID money in the state coffers. We're feeling good making all these
grand promises. And then what happens next year. Well, the next batch
of money, one hundred million dollars that was supposed to come to fresnoe in
twenty twenty three, well we don't got it, sorry, Jerry. So
we're gonna bump it off. We're going to bump it back by one year,
no problem. Jerry Dyer puts a brave face on it. Politicians and
Fresno put a brave face on it. They say, that's that's fine,
that's fine, We're okay, you know, we can still do our planning.
Well, twenty twenty four comes around and we are now bumped by two
years. And here's the thing. Gavin Newsom is making a lot of people
upset with this kind of activity because he got everyone used to, a lot
of supporters, used to a certain kind of financial picture that was actually,
I think anomalous. And now the norm, the norm that we are going
to the norm that we're going to face here in California. The guys who
host this Old House on PBS, one of them is named Norm and they
all have Boston accent. So Norm. Ever, every time I say the
word norm in front of my wife, we both go norm. The norm
in California politics, I think, is going to be one of scarcity.
The budget that we have built up and that we got used to through COVID
when we were getting all this federal money is not a budget we can sustain
in a post COVID world where we don't have all that federal assistance, because
the revenue we're getting from taxpayers in California just is not enough. The revenue
we're getting from the most heavily taxed population in the country is not enough.
And now Newsom's got the problem that there are people who are more of a
political threat to him getting angry at him than Jerry Dyer. So there's this
piece in The Americans Spectator written by Ellie Guardie Holmes. Gavin Newsom is not
having a good time. Progressives are turning against him. California has reached a
point, she writes, where it is on a fundamental level, fiscally unsound.
The budget deficit, which by one estimate amounts to seventy three billion dollars,
is not the result of an off year that happened to generate lower revenues.
No, this is a structural problem. The disparity between tax revenues and
spending is so vast that the entire system, celebrated by liberals as a model
of progressive governance, is a house of cards. And it was all built
by Governor Gavin Newsom, who chose extravagant progressive policies over maintaining a sustainable budget.
The insane overspending began the day Newsom took office on January seventh, twenty
nineteen. At the time, radicals at the state capitol were eager to create
the progressive utopia they had long envisioned but had been unable to achieve under former
Governor Jerry Brown, who prioritized fiss restraint. In his inaugural address, Newsom
made it clear he would depart from Brown's approach and pursue the realization of the
progressive vision. We will be prudent stewards of taxpayer dollars, pay down debts,
and meet our future obligations, he said. But let me be clear,
we will be bold, we will aim high, and we will work
like hell to get there. As his governorship began, Newsom revealed just how
bold he would be. Leading up to his inaugural address, Newsom promised he
would provide all Californians with two free years of college and toss a couple billion
extra toward early childhood programs. Then, in his first policy move, Newsom
announced he would extend free health care coverage to illegal immigrants until they reached the
age of twenty six. In a sign of how far to the left Democrats
were on the issue of immigration at the time, Newsom pledged in his address
to make California a sanctuary to all who seek it. Later, Newsom would
extend free health care coverage to all illegal immigrants. That's medical medical coverage totally,
does not matter what your legal immigration statuses or lack thereof. Lavish spending
might have initially pleased Newsom's constituencies and endeared him to radical California Democrats, but
it has led him to a day of reckoning. Those who once loved him
because he rained money on them are now turning against him as he implements cuts
to their programs. The rift was made evident in May when the California Teachers
Association, a stalwart Newsom ally that has benefited handsomely from his tight relationship from
its tight relationship with the governor, released an advertisement that bordered on an attack
against him. Tell lawmakers and Gavin Newsom to pass a state budget that protects
public schools for our students and communities, said the ad. The union invested
an unknown amount to broadcast these ads on television in California. Additionally, the
group's president, David Goldberg, publicly opposed Newsom's plan to use an accounting maneuver
to maintain school budgets, a tactic that would nullify Newsom's guarantees on education funding
and fear years. It was a shocking turn of events as the union has
donated hundreds of thousands to Newsom. In this case, the harsh tactics proved
successful. Politico reported last week the Newsom and the Teachers Association that come to
an agreement that would guarantee additional billions in education spending increases in coming years.
Now, even Planned Parenthood, who has also benefited enormously under Newsom's governorship,
has turned. The president of Planned Parent Affiliates of California, Jody Hicks,
blasted Newsom in a series of posts on x last month over healthcare funding decreases.
The governor announced in his May revisal of the state budget. Planned Parenthood
in California is deeply disappointed by the proposal and the California Governors may revise that
will jeopardize access to not just sexual and reproductive care, but quality, affordable
healthcare across the board for the nearly fifteen million Californians who rely on medical said
Hicks. Such comments are far removed from the tight relationship the abortion group previously
had with Newsom, who in twenty nineteen doubled the states spending on quote,
reproductive health from fifty million to one hundred million, a significant amount of which
went to Planned Parenthood. So we can go on. But basically Newsome is
starting to anger some of the key cornerstones of his existing constituency. Why because
he got them used to you know, caviare bonbonds and you know prime grade
steak, And now all of a sudden he realizes he can't afford anything more
than hamburger. And let's understand the two groups that they mention here, teachers'
unions and Planned Parenthood. These are representative of the two most powerful forces in
state government. Labor unions in California rule the roost. They run California politics.
How thoroughly do they run California politics, you may ask. The labor
unions don't even bother anymore with the normal thing of just giving campaign donations to
a politician and then that politician votes the way they want. They've gone to
the level of just run labor union executives for seats in the state Assembly in
the state Senate. Just cut out the middleman, get the seat yourself,
all right. Some of you might remember Lorena Gonzalez she was a State Assembly
member from the San Diego area for many many years. She was the chair
basically of the She was chair of the Assembly Appropriations Committee. So that's one
of the most powerful positions in the whole in the entire of California government,
the chairs of the Senate and the Assembly appropriations committees. Why because basically they
give the up or down vote. They give the thumbs up or the thumbs
down for any bill that's gonna spend money in California. So it's an incredibly
powerful position. She's the gal who authored AB five that reclassified all kinds of
different workers from independent contractors to part time employees, which was a massive boon
for the labor unions. She was a labor union official before she ran for
the Assembly, and she's right back as a labor union executive now now that
she's term limited out of the Assembly. So that's the kind of people who
are running the legislature. And there are several other members of the state legislature
who that was their former job being labor union officials. So the teachers you
unions, which is the most powerful group of unions, public sector unions,
they have tons of members, they have tons of money. They give tons
of money. They have given tons of money to Newsom. You've got the
teachers' unions, and then you've got Planned Parenthood. Now it's not that Planned
Parenthood itself is so big, or so wealthy or so powerful, but they're
the leading edge for social liberalism in California. And if they're upset at Gavin
Newsom, and they are. And it's also this, Sometimes groups are angry,
and what Gavin Newsom is fearful of is not the group itself, it's
the donors who fund that group. Nobody's really afraid. I think of the
Sierra Club. They're afraid of the gazillionaire donors who fund the Sierra Club.
Nobody's afraid of Planned Parenthood, making planned parenthood mad. They're afraid of the
big time donors who politically support planned parenthood. That's what they're afraid of.
So is Gavin Newsom nervous about about all of this? I think we're gonna
find out a lot in the next few months, well probably post November,
we're gonna know. I think Gavin Newsom doesn't really have a ton to worry
about from ticking off all of these people. Why Well, because the audience
he's playing for is still pretty small, and it's also a little different.
Gavin Newsom's eye is on the presidency now, it's not really on California.
I'll talk about this more when we return. This is the John Girardi Show
on Power Talk. Big story in the American Spectator about how Gavin Newsom is
ticking off some of the most important allies and backers he has in California,
namely Planned Parenthood representing all the social liberals who back him, and the California
Teachers Association representing organized labor. They're both mad at him, and that's not
usually. That's not a great place to be in if you're a California politician,
if you're a Democrat and you want to win in California, what do
you need. Well, you need to have your social liberal bona fidez proved,
and you need the backing of organized labor because organized labor runs California.
But is that really what Gavin Newsom cares about? First of all, from
Newsom's perspective, like what do these people want from him? The state is
facing the deficit that it faces, and this is a problem the Democrat governors
of California have always sort of had to deal with, is that the buck
really does stop with them when it comes to spending, Like you have to
balance the budget or come close. You cannot just spend in the red forever.
If you're a state government, you just can't spend in the red forever.
And individual assembly members introducing and voting on bills for spending or voting on
a budget, they don't care. It's not you know, it's not their
rear end on the line. They're not the final decision maker. They're just
one of a group of eighty or for the state Senate, a group of
forty, so they don't care. The governor has to come up with something
thing, He has to come up with something that gets somewhere close to being
a balanced budget. So the you know, so what do these people want
from him? Like he has to cut something. He has to cut something
to get from a seventy three billion dollar deficit or whatever the number is.
And different people give you different numbers based on how they you know, how
much they squint. And Newsom's number doesn't sound as disastrous as that seventy three
billion, But he's got to cut something. There's no other way. So
on the one hand, I think Newsom can come back to these groups and
say, hey, listen, I gotta do something here. I gave you
so much more money, like you're and you're coming at me like this,
like come on, let's work together. And and Newsom has enough of a
relationship in history with these groups that he can sit down and work with them,
and maybe he just gives away the store at the end of the day.
Maybe maybe he doesn't feel the same kind of responsibility for physical responsibility you
know that Jerry Brown felt back in the day. But here's the thing,
I just don't know that Gavin Newsom really is afraid anymore of what the Teachers'
Union necessarily thinks about him, or what even like California Planned Parenthood thinks about
him. Gavin Newsom is playing for a very small select audience of about I
don't know, three hundred people, give or take literally about three hundred give
or take ultra wealthy people, and probably the number smaller than that. Even
California is the home to a lot of the United States big money political donor
class on the right end on the left, Okay, you go to Orange
County for some of these political things conservative political things that happen down there.
There's a ton of big time national GOP fundraising that happens down in Orange County.
There are even one or two people up here in Fresno. Okay,
the California GOP can't do jack squat, and I think a lot of those
big time donors are tired of you know, they're they're not funding a bunch
of people in California too much, but they are funding national Republican causes anyway.
Similarly with Democrats, Okay, the big time national Democrat money, a
lot of it is based here. It's in Silicon Valley, and it's with
these old money types in San Francisco. Like it's no surprise that Nancy Pelosi
was the Speaker of the House for so long, or the Democrat leader slash
Democrat Speaker of the House for so long. Why because a lot of them
lived right in her district and she could bump over to Marin County. Anyway,
Look at all the major Look look at the swathe of major Democrat powerbrokers
in California. They're all San Francisco people, Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom,
Kamala Harris. This is where all the big money in Democrat politics is and
it's that money that Newsom has relied on for his whole career, his entire
his pre political career. Even so, all the wine shops and the businesses
that Newsom had before he entered politics, you know who was a big investor
in almost all of them was Gordon Getty. The Getty family, like the
Getty Museum, Getty's, the Getty Oil Company, Getty's. Okay. Newsom's
dad was an attorney for the Getty family. Gavin Newsom grew up with Gordon
Getty. They're lifelong friends. Gordon invested in all of Newsom's businesses. Gordon
was part of the Willie Brown magic circle of elite San Francisco political donors.
And that's how Gavin Newsom got into politics via Gordon Getty, via Willy Brown.
Willy Brown appoints him to be a county supervisor, basically for City of
San Francisco, which is kind of its own county, and from there Newsom's
career took off. Newsom knows this crowd depends on this crowd, relies on
this crowd, and this is the crowd that he needs to placate between now
and twenty twenty eight. So for the next four years, his chief job
is to keep this crowd of people happy, if not sooner, if not
sooner than twenty twenty eight, maybe twenty twenty four, maybe a few months
from now. I think that's unlikely for a lot of reasons. But I
don't think it's out of the realm of the It's not out of the realm
of the possible. But that's the crowd Newsom has to please. Newsom does
not give a flying rats. You know what if he breaks a promise to
Jerry Dyer, I guarantee you that Gavin Newsom loses zero sleep over. Oh
sorry, Jerry Dyer. That two hundred million dollars the city of Fresno was
supposed to get, you know, in twenty three and twenty four, looks
like maybe you'll get it in twenty five and twenty six. Maybe I don't
think we're ever going to get it. We're not gonna get the whole thing,
that's for darn sure. I mean, there's just some fundamental math that
does not work with letting Fresno get two hundred million more dollars. There's just
some fundamental political and math realities that I think do not add up. So
does is Newsom scared about ticking off the teachers Association? I mean, clearly
he kind of jumped when they said to because I think, you know,
he still needs to kind of keep him in his fold for the next couple
of years as he's finishing up his term as governor. But I don't think
he's as scared of them anymore. In the same way on the national stage,
the California Teachers Association, how much do they matter? How much does
organized labor really matter? On the national Democrat level. It's still significant,
It's still important. It's not I don't think he can antagonize them. But
the main people that Newsom has to keep happy, I think he is keeping
quite happy. I think he has known these people and cultivated relationships with these
people for years, and that's the crowd that he's responsive to. I just
don't think, you know, we can point out how Planned Parenthood of California
is mad at him for you know, cutting some different various healthcare things.
I there's no way Planned Parenthood could be really that discontented with Gavin Newsom.
No one has been a better friend to Planned Parenthood than he has. This
is posturing on their part. They're just trying to ring every single dollar they
can out of the state. The boons that Newsom has done for the California
Teachers Association. I mean, they are trying again to ring every single dollar
they can out of the state. That's all this is. I don't think
Newsom is afraid and again these are not. This is not the crowd.
Newsom needs to kind of play case them to keep the last years of his
governorship kind of smooth through twenty twenty six. But this is not the crowd
that he needs to keep happy. The crowd he needs to keep happy are
again, it's maybe three hundred people. It's all these people who you know
would go to fancy outdoor garden parties with Nancy Pelosi. That's the crowd.
That's the crowd he needs to keep happy, and he's doing that. When
we return, a sudden uptick in talk about Joe Biden's age and do we
believe the polls next on the John Girardi Show. So we're all of a
sudden starting to get some rumblings about Biden's mental state and mental sharpness. I
Mean, people talk about it a lot because it's impossible to hide, and
especially after the release of the transcripts from his interview last year with Special Counsel
her who's investigating him for keeping documents at his house. Which the more I
think about that whole episode, the more unsatisfied I feel with it. It's
like, yes, we obviously uncovered evidence that he very deliberately did this.
He obviously knew that what he was doing was wrong. We have all this
evidence pointing to it, but we're just not going to prosecute him because a
jury would probably think that he's a sweet, nice, senile old man and
that he's senile now, so therefore we shouldn't prosecute him for stuff he did
then when he probably still knew what he was doing. The fact that Biden
is not getting prosecuted, or that the Justice Department didn't recommend at the very
least, the Justice Department didn't say Biden is probably worthy of being prosecuted at
this point, but we face the burden of he's the sitting president of the
United States and whether the sitting president of the United States is subject to prosecution
or whether he has immunity. Like, the more and more I think about
that whole thing, the more unsatisfied I feel with it. Anyway, we're
starting to have another little bit of a spike in talk about Biden's lack of
mental sharpness. So the Wall Street Journal was able to run a piece.
They got some sources to talk. Here's their description, and this drives with,
you know, the stuff that Kevin McCarthy has said, actually publicly since
Kevin McCarthy left a speaker, he was very openly saying, yeah, it's
ridiculous when President This from the Wall Street Journal. When President Biden met with
congressional leaders in the West Wing in January to negotiate a Ukraine funding deal,
he spoke so softly at times that some participants struggled to hear him. According
to five people familiar with the meeting, he read from notes to make obvious
points, paused for extended periods, and sometimes closed his eyes for so long
that some of the room wondered whether he had tuned out. In a February
one on one chat in the Oval office with House Speaker Mike Johnson, the
President said a recent policy changed by his administration that jeopardizes some big energy projects
was just a study. According to six people told at the time, about
what Johnson said had happened. Johnson worried the president's memory had slipped about the
details of his own policy. Last year, when Biden was negotiating with House
Republicans to lift the death ceiling, his demeanor and command of the details seemed
to shift from one day to the next. According to then how Speaker Kevin
McCarthy and two others familiar with the talks, on some days he had loose
and spontaneous exchanges with Republicans, and on others he mumbled and appeared to rely
on notes. I used to meet with him when he was vice president.
I'd go to his house, McCarthy said in an interview, He's not the
same person now. Why is there this uptick? And I think it ties
in a conversation with my mom about this the other day where and I think
my mom is reflective of the concerns of a lot of conservatives. Biden doesn't
seem worried about his poll numbers. Biden doesn't seem particularly concerned that the only
Democrats who seem really concerned about it are people on the outside, So chattering
heads on the outside, like the James Carrvills of the world. Now I
think I would. You know, I don't like James Carville by any stretch,
but I feel like I would trust his political instincts. You know,
if there's one thing the guy's good at, it's having people be elected president
and or you know, a prime minister of Israel. James Carville is good
at politics. Okay with say what you will about him personally or anything else.
Do you think about him? James Carrville is really good at politics,
and if he's really concerned about Biden, it's probably a decent reason to be
concerned. But at the same time, Carville's not in it. He's not
actively working for the Biden campaign. He's not seeing all the numbers that the
Biden camp is seeing, and the Biden camp is sort of doesn't seem too
worried, and the President doesn't seem too worried. There's reporting that the President
is actually fairly closely monitoring polls and he's trying to tell people both publicly and
privately, that the polls are just not reflective of where the country really is
right now. And there's some sort of sense that the groups that are disaffected
with Biden right now and who are resulting in him bleeding support young people,
Latino voters, African American voters, that those voters are going to come back
home, or as some conservative suspective, this is the suspicion of other conservatives,
and frankly, after the Trump trial, I guess I don't know why
we shouldn't exclude it from the realm of possibility. After all, through the
Trump trial you see Democrats willing to do any kind of dirty Shenanigan possible to
get Trump. Is the fix in? Somehow do they think that, you
know, the kinds of networks of whether flat out illegal things or just legal
ways in which they can shift the vote on election day? Do they have
enough of a fix in that they're just not afraid of Biden really losing?
Well, I guess I'm just I'm not sure if it's a thing of Democrats
are really not that concerned, or the Democrats who are running this are delusional.
Clearly Biden is and the fact that this man is still being allowed by
his family to run for president is revolting. Makes you really kind of raise
your eyebrows about Jill Biden and her involvement in all of this, Like,
how is it that I just cannot fathom being the spouse of someone who is
obviously in this kind of a condition and saying, yes, continue to be
president of the United States for another four years. This is definitely good for
you and for everybody else. No, it like he's he's so obviously not
well. So maybe it's just a thing of So you've got two problems.
Biden is not well. On the one hand, the alternative to Biden is
also terrible. The alternative to Biden is Kamala Harris, and I think that
people she is such a terrible alternative that that's why nobody is pulling the trigger
on getting rid of Biden or saying that Biden should be got rid of.
She's a disaster. If it's her versus Trump, Trump will clean her clock
seven days a week and twice on Sundays. So I so you've got Biden
is already there, and he's not so far gone mentally that I think the
cabinet does and feel like they could trigger a twenty fifth Amendment thing against him.
In fairness, I think that would be a really destabilizing thing for any
cabinet to trigger a twenty fifth Amendment removal of a president. Ever, so
they can't force Biden out. They let him in. They let him stay
in for the primaries. He's already won all these seats. If you get
rid of him at the convention, you have to put in Harris. Why
do I say that just given the racial politics and the youth politics within the
Democratic Party, they're bleeding African American and Latino and young people's support as it
is. Do you really think that those African American voters are going to come
back into the fold, which is what they need to win? Do you
really think those African American voters are going to come back in if you pass
over a black woman in fame, you pass over a black woman to pick
Gavit Newsom or Pete Boodagic, because those are the options pretty much well,
once you get past Harris, those two guys are probably your best bets.
How do you think if you've already got African American voters disaffected with Joe Biden,
how do you think they're going to feel about a Democrat ticket that passes
over Kamala Harris? How do you think they're going to feel about a Democratic
ticket? And not just African American voters, but also these young voters who
are so angry at Biden over Palestine. These people are all super into intersectional
politics, and they are the people for whom you were, the people you
were placating by saying, I will only pick an African American woman to be
my vice president, I will only pick an African American woman to be my
Supreme Court justice. You pass over an African American woman for a white guy,
good luck, good luck getting those people back, especially for someone like
Gavin Newsom, who is hardly a Bernie sanderste Okay. He is not some
kind of socialist. He is a squarely in the Bidens sort of camp as
far as how he views corporate America and Texas and stuff. He's not gonna
appeal to the AOC types. So I think Biden in his camp knows one
that the Democrats are stuck with him. They don't have any other options.
If you go to Harris, it's a disaster. If you pass over Harris,
it's also a disaster. And I think what they're waiting on, and
I think the reason why they're not scared is the Trump conviction only happened like
six days ago. Trump's conviction and the distinct possibility that he could go to
jail. Are the wild cards that we have no idea how they're going to
play out, And I think a lot of people in the Biden camp are
probably just thinking there's no point agitating over these polls. Right now. Trump
has been convicted of a felony. I think it was a bogus felony.
And the Democrats, I think their whole campaign was premised around that, around
successfully getting home a conviction against Donald Trump before the election. When we return
how that plan was supposed to happen and where it's going next on the John
Girardi Show. So the whole Democrat strategy for this election was fairly transparent.
Trump did stuff at various points that Democrats thought could be grounds for criminal prosecution.
He had his Stormy dan Ks thing that various prosecutors in New York were
looking at. Both. You had the Southern District of New York, the
federal prosecutors looked at it. You had the Manhattan DA's office looking at it.
You had his conduct surrounding January sixth. Was there something there that they
could cook up that they could turn into a crime that you have his conduct
in Georgia surrounding the events after the election. Was he unduly trying to pressure
the governor or the attorney general or the Secretary of State of Georgia in ways
that were inappropriate? Was the way he was setting up a possible alternate slate
of electors? Was there something fraudulent there that they could cook up? And
then the mar A Lago documents thing. What a gift to Democrats that was
perfectly just dropped into their lap that he's got all these classified documents that he's
probably not supposed to have in his house just sitting in boxes. Okay,
So the Democrats strategy was, we bring these indictments around the start of the
Republican primary process because we know how the Republican base will react to it.
The Republican base will get mad and they will get defensive towards their guy because
they will think this is wildly inappropriate, which it was for pretty much all
those cases, I think, other than the other than the mar A Lago
documents case, which is only an appropriate insofar as they didn't also charge Biden
with the exact same thing anyway, So they knew the Republican base would get
angry at it. And note how these indictments against Trump. They dropped like
very shortly after Ron De Santis entered the race, completely took the wins out
of ron De Santis, the sales. No one else even had a shot.
Nikki Haley never had a shot. Trump wins the Republican primary easily.
So the plan is they bring an indictment when the primary starts, and maybe
they get a conviction in twenty twenty four. So basically from now until election
day, Joe Biden will be able to talk about Donald Trump as convicted fellon
Donald Trump, convicted fellon Donald Trump, and not only talk about him as
convicted fellon Donald Trump. There's the distinct possibility that Trump could go to jail,
that he could be incarcerated for much of the remainder of the campaign,
if not for a long span of time to come. So I think that's
why Biden isn't very scared right now, or he's talking a very big game.
There's so what do you do with a presidential nominee? Are people still
going to vote for a presidential nominee who's in jail? Are they going to
vote for whoever his vice presidential pick is while he's sitting in jail. I
don't know. I don't think they will, and I think that's the source
of Biden's confidence. That'll do it. John Jarroady Show, See you next
time on Power Talk