Speaker 1: You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
Speaker 1: six forty.
Speaker 2: And this is KFI AM six forty Bill Handle here
Speaker 2: on a Friday morning, August twenty third.
Speaker 3: Let's see what's going on.
Speaker 2: Oh, Robert Kennedy expected today to endorse Donald Trump. And
Speaker 2: the deal is a quid pro quo. You give me
Speaker 2: a really high position in the administration, I will endorse you.
Speaker 2: And it looks like Trump.
Speaker 3: Has bought it. Because it looks like Trump has bought it.
Speaker 2: All right, So the big news last night, Oh, before
Speaker 2: we get to that, just really quickly, the podcast, the
Speaker 2: Bill Handles Show podcast is dropping again yesterday. It's Tuesday Thursdays,
Speaker 2: and yesterday was crazy memorabilia. The stuff that people pay
Speaker 2: for and what they sell is just completely insane, that is.
Speaker 2: And you can hear it on Spotify. iHeart iHeart app
Speaker 2: radio app. Also I'm trying to think of all the
Speaker 2: platforms Apple. In any case, it's Tuesdays and Thursdays, the
Speaker 2: Bill Handle Show podcast. You can also go to the
Speaker 2: Bill handleshowpodcast dot com for the website. All right now,
Speaker 2: last night, Vice President Harris accepted the Democratic nomination. What
Speaker 2: a shocker, and in a well anticipated hugely anticipated speech
Speaker 2: and it was the biggest speech.
Speaker 3: Of her career. Usually that happens with accepting the nomination.
Speaker 2: She did and did it pretty well, I thought, And
Speaker 2: that is do the normal just soaring rhetoric that you
Speaker 2: hear from nominees at that point and at the same
Speaker 2: time a personal attack on Donald Trump. And that is
Speaker 2: going to be the way this campaign is going to go.
Speaker 2: It is going to be a this is hope.
Speaker 3: Joy.
Speaker 2: Joy is an immense part of the campaign. And then
Speaker 2: my question is on the joy part. Did it morph
Speaker 2: into joy or was that plan from the beginning, because
Speaker 2: as the convention started to keep in mind that she
Speaker 2: had already won the nomination, they had voted early virtually
Speaker 2: so this was just to I guess, conclude it in
Speaker 2: some way symbolically. But it was described by virtually every
Speaker 2: commentator or every news outlet.
Speaker 3: It was a party. That's what this was. It was
Speaker 3: a party.
Speaker 2: And everybody that I was watching was, in fact saying
Speaker 2: that the exuberance in the hall, the electricity did you
Speaker 2: hear for those of you that watched it or for
Speaker 2: those of you that didn't, Every time a speaker would
Speaker 2: be there and there was any kind of a phrase,
Speaker 2: a short, succinct phrase, the screaming that came from the hall.
Speaker 2: How many people were up there? Twousand people and in
Speaker 2: unison they all yelled. One of them, of course, is
Speaker 2: Kamala Harris's mantra, right when we fight, we win. And
Speaker 2: every time someone says that the whole place just exploded
Speaker 2: with that phrase or any phrase that was uttered by
Speaker 2: a speaker, I mean there was real excitement there, real excitement.
Speaker 3: Also a quick.
Speaker 2: Note, were there more balloons dropped than at any other time.
Speaker 2: It may get to the point where the hall is
Speaker 2: going to be nothing but balloons twelve feet deep in
Speaker 2: the next few elections. But I want to spend a
Speaker 2: couple of minutes talking about just some of the takeaways,
Speaker 2: because it would take me a very long time to
Speaker 2: go through all of it. She spoke for forty minutes.
Speaker 2: She hit on many different points, and I don't want
Speaker 2: to hit everyone. But overriding it are two main issues.
Speaker 2: One is we're going to be in a better place.
Speaker 2: We're doing pretty well now versus the Republicans portraying.
Speaker 3: America as this miserable place.
Speaker 2: Where unemployment is rife, illegal aliens have taken your jobs,
Speaker 2: Inflation is out of control. Even though it's under three percent,
Speaker 2: it's the worst crime we have ever experienced in the country.
Speaker 2: Not really, crime is down this year pretty substantially. It's
Speaker 2: going to be that kind of attack. There's two realities here.
Speaker 2: There are two realities. One is hope and one is change,
Speaker 2: and one is joyfulness. Now Biden's Biden's administration, which she
Speaker 2: was part of. She's keeping most of the policy. She's
Speaker 2: gonna have to differential state, differential, differential, cell, differentiate, differentiate.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Bill oh Peek.
Speaker 2: No, as always, what if people think when I do that,
Speaker 2: this clown gets paid for talking and I can do
Speaker 2: so much better.
Speaker 3: Two things I want to point out to you.
Speaker 2: One you're absolutely right and two you're absolutely right. Now
Speaker 2: it's going to differentiate, or try she will differentiate from Biden,
Speaker 2: but at the same time, not really. She is simply
Speaker 2: going to put it in I think terms that are
Speaker 2: more palatable. Look what we did a lot of it is.
Speaker 2: Look how extraordinary the Biden administration was. Look what he
Speaker 2: brought to the table, Look what he did, and it
Speaker 2: was extraordinary. One of the most successful presidencies in the
Speaker 2: history of the United States.
Speaker 3: That's the way it's being portrayed.
Speaker 2: As far as Donald Trump is portraying her presidency or
Speaker 2: the Biden administration as the worst in the history of
Speaker 2: this country, the worst economic peril we've ever been, and
Speaker 2: far worse than the Great Depression, far worse than the
Speaker 2: Great Recession. And you know, for some is that true.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I don't think so. Illegal alien has
Speaker 3: not taken my job.
Speaker 2: I have yet to meet somebody who says an illegal
Speaker 2: migrant has taken my job. I'd like to know anybody
Speaker 2: who has had that happen. But that is the premise.
Speaker 2: I mean, Trump does go and point to a crowd
Speaker 2: of ten, fifteen, twenty thousand people and say, migrants have
Speaker 2: taken your jobs. Yep, certainly has a lot of personal
Speaker 2: attacks are going on, a lot of truths are being
Speaker 2: undone and on more. Well, I'm going to say on
Speaker 2: the Republican side there is more let's just say playing
Speaker 2: with the truth, and is the Democrat side.
Speaker 3: But that doesn't mean the attacks aren't coming.
Speaker 2: I'm going to go and deal with some of these
Speaker 2: when we come back in terms of what she said,
Speaker 2: what she meant, how much of it is real, what
Speaker 2: kind of rhetoric? And then Donald Trump's response, We know
Speaker 2: how with the kind of personal attacks, the only issue
Speaker 2: is how they're going to sign, how they're going to
Speaker 2: how they're going to come off. What are they what's
Speaker 2: he going to signal? One of them was great last
Speaker 2: night in the middle of it, and she talked about
Speaker 2: coach Walls, right, and he tweeted he was no coach,
Speaker 2: he was an assistant coach. Don't call him a coach.
Speaker 2: That was a Donald Trump tweet.
Speaker 1: The Republicans should stop using they take your jobs and
Speaker 1: start using they take your down payments for home loans,
Speaker 1: because that's true.
Speaker 2: Now in California, we don't know how many people are
Speaker 2: not going to get those home loans. And I'd love
Speaker 2: to see the attack on they're giving illegal aliens home loans.
Speaker 3: That is a legitimate attack.
Speaker 2: Kamala Harris accepts the Democratic nomination and a speech that
Speaker 2: went almost forty minutes, and I'm going.
Speaker 3: To give her pretty good grades.
Speaker 2: She's no Tim Walls. I'll tell you that she's no Oprah.
Speaker 2: But she did come off as well as I've ever
Speaker 2: seen her. And she was able to do two hits,
Speaker 2: and that is describe what she is going to do
Speaker 2: while and talk about I think almost play a separate
Speaker 2: part than Joe Biden, when in fact she's probably going
Speaker 2: to simply maintain the Joe Biden agenda, but she's going
Speaker 2: to paint it in I think, a different light. It's
Speaker 2: almost like Pope Francis, who in fact is as conservative
Speaker 2: as any other pope has been, but he paints it
Speaker 2: in a very different light. And I think that where
Speaker 2: Harris went. Now, what she did is spend an enormous
Speaker 2: amount of time talking about the future, talking about hope,
Speaker 2: and then the theme is going to be joy that
Speaker 2: the Democrats are bringing this campaign versus what Donald Trump
Speaker 2: is bringing. And that's a cynical It couldn't be worse.
Speaker 2: Life is terrible.
Speaker 3: I connect with that.
Speaker 2: Do you know that even though I'm not a big
Speaker 2: fan of Donald Trump, and I think the personal attacks
Speaker 2: I think are and I just don't like the outright lies.
Speaker 3: I mean, just straight out lies.
Speaker 2: That's a big difference in that, as I said earlier,
Speaker 2: the worst economic point we've ever been in the history
Speaker 2: of the United States.
Speaker 3: See really, by that.
Speaker 2: She gets elected, it's guaranteed World War three will start.
Speaker 2: You really get that, I mean, you know that's a
Speaker 2: little bit far. I really believe that, and so I
Speaker 2: do believe that the Republican campaign is going to be
Speaker 2: absolutely personal and portraying this apocalyptic view of what America
Speaker 2: is going to be if it turns out that the
Speaker 2: Democrats win. On the other side, she portrays a person
Speaker 2: who has no guardrails, who thinks more of himself than
Speaker 2: he does of the country.
Speaker 3: I believe that.
Speaker 2: Usually people are owed by the presidency. Virtually every president
Speaker 2: I have seen in my lifetime is totally awed by
Speaker 2: the presidency. Donald Trump is not. He is owed by
Speaker 2: Donald Trump. That I guarantee you is the truth. And
Speaker 2: you know, it's interesting. He is a guy who has
Speaker 2: been able to pull off being insanely wealthy yet at
Speaker 2: the same time a populist. By the way, it's not
Speaker 2: the only person who's ever done this, if you notice
Speaker 2: last night and certainly Walls and Harrow has talked about
Speaker 2: their middle class upbringing. I'm one of you. We are
Speaker 2: in it together. I grew up in a middle class home.
Speaker 2: My parents gave me everything I needed. My parents made
Speaker 2: me the person I was. You don't hear that from
Speaker 2: Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: You don't.
Speaker 2: What you hear is make America great again. And I'm
Speaker 2: going to do it. And by the way, he's not
Speaker 2: alone in doing that, being a very wealthy guy and
Speaker 2: connecting with the people on a populist level.
Speaker 3: You know who did that.
Speaker 2: More than any other president in the history of the
Speaker 2: United States, Franklin Roosevelt. Franklin Roosevelt, who created social Security
Speaker 2: and kept this country going through the depression. A lot
Speaker 2: of people argue that he really didn't do much and
Speaker 2: all he did was start a socialist government. Well, in reality,
Speaker 2: people were starving by the millions. And I don't care
Speaker 2: what anybody says about Franklin Roosevelt.
Speaker 3: He literally kept.
Speaker 2: Millions and millions of people from starving through governmental programs
Speaker 2: which prior to that Republican administrations A La Hoover simply
Speaker 2: didn't do.
Speaker 3: And so here he is for the little guy, which
Speaker 3: he was.
Speaker 2: And Roosevelt had a ton of money and it didn't
Speaker 2: seem to bother people. The same time Trump comes from
Speaker 2: a ton of money. He is a billionaire. He started rich,
Speaker 2: and he made himself even richer with his real estate empire.
Speaker 2: And no one seems, certainly on the Republican side, no
Speaker 2: one seems to resent it.
Speaker 3: As a matter of fact.
Speaker 2: I think they even admire it on some level, is
Speaker 2: that he is so wealthy and he did it by
Speaker 2: fighting the man.
Speaker 3: And I'm going to fight the man for you.
Speaker 2: Why because it's a deep state, because it's the intelligence
Speaker 2: community is there, They're traders, and it's very weird. The
Speaker 2: realities here are very strange. So what you saw is
Speaker 2: at one point, how great America is going to be,
Speaker 2: how she is going to.
Speaker 3: Basically bring the same.
Speaker 2: Sort of the same philosophy and the same programs as
Speaker 2: Joe Biden's going to continue with Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: At the same time, there was no hope with Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: There wasn't.
Speaker 2: The convention would have been a very different animal had
Speaker 2: Joe Biden stood up there and accepted the nomination.
Speaker 3: It was a lot of depressed a lot of depressed
Speaker 3: people who.
Speaker 2: Reluctantly are forced to vote for Joe Biden because they
Speaker 2: won't vote for Donald Trump. And now that has changed.
Speaker 2: Now it's joy and it really is. You can see
Speaker 2: it at the convention. I mean, she has been able
Speaker 2: to electrify, she's been able to ignite the Democratic Party.
Speaker 2: Now we get to see is it a honeymoon that
Speaker 2: then is going to.
Speaker 3: Numbers are going to be lowered and.
Speaker 2: It's going to be much much more of a wipeout
Speaker 2: that was certainly the case when it was Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: Or is she going to continue with her numbers going up?
Speaker 2: Tell you one thing, at this point, the Republicans are
Speaker 2: sweating bullets.
Speaker 3: There is no question about that.
Speaker 2: They are, really, particularly Donald Trump. He has argued that
Speaker 2: Joe Biden should be in the race, not Kamala Harris.
Speaker 2: It is unconstitutional for her for him not to be
Speaker 2: the nominee, and a coup took place. I mean, throwing
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff out there, as if a nominee
Speaker 2: can't just say I don't want to run because I'm
Speaker 2: going to lose, so I can't wait. This is just
Speaker 2: the start and it's going to be fascinating from now
Speaker 2: until the election in November. This is the time when
Speaker 2: it's good to have this job. You know, there are
Speaker 2: times when it's not, and there are times when it's great.
Speaker 3: Time is going to be great, all right. The other
Speaker 3: thing that's going on I want to share with you
Speaker 3: PG and E.
Speaker 2: And the fires that have occurred because of what PG
Speaker 2: and E did or more importantly didn't do.
Speaker 3: I when forest fires or wildfires.
Speaker 2: Were being reported more and more. I didn't really blame
Speaker 2: the utilities that much. I always thought that it was
Speaker 2: ignited by someone and the utilities. You know, those power
Speaker 2: lines going down really didn't do it. Those power lines
Speaker 2: going down really did do it. PG and E has
Speaker 2: reported to state regulators sixty two agnitions in high fire
Speaker 2: areas so far this year, sixty five for the entirety
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty three already sixty two. Twenty nine of
Speaker 2: them occurred just the last few weeks the heat wave
Speaker 2: in July. So what is going on? Well, PG and
Speaker 2: E is, first of all, they got nailed, I mean
Speaker 2: nailed after the campfire. For example, they settle for twenty
Speaker 2: five billion dollars. Also had to file for bankruptcy. I
Speaker 2: mean there was no way they were going to just
Speaker 2: accept all those lawsuits or deal with them. So they
Speaker 2: had to go to bankruptcy court to figure out what
Speaker 2: to do and hold off all of the settlements or
Speaker 2: at least the lawsuits going forward until the settlements were reached.
Speaker 2: And so they've now been looking at what they can do.
Speaker 2: One of the things that you would think they would
Speaker 2: do is clean up all of the brush and the
Speaker 2: ignitable fuel that's around these power poles, because in case
Speaker 2: there is a good healthy win down the lines go
Speaker 2: ignite fires.
Speaker 3: You know what, they're not doing that anymore.
Speaker 2: Why well, because they have one hundred and fifty thousand
Speaker 2: of them to do. Oh no, actually one hundred and
Speaker 2: ninety thousand of them to do, So that art is
Speaker 2: sort of being set aside. What they're doing is relying
Speaker 2: more heavily on new power line settings at areas that
Speaker 2: are at high risk of fire. And what they do
Speaker 2: these are sensors where the electric line shuts off within
Speaker 2: a tenth of a second when any of the power
Speaker 2: lines touch anything. Be it a bird that somehow connects
Speaker 2: two power lines. And you've seen a lot of birds
Speaker 2: on power lines. It's fine if they're on a single
Speaker 2: power line. Not so fine when somehow through the bird,
Speaker 2: two power lines touch and the electricity is conducted.
Speaker 3: Now, to be fair, that's pretty entertaining.
Speaker 2: To see a bird get fried, they actually get vaporized,
Speaker 2: and always see his feather feathers flying around. But the
Speaker 2: danger is so extraordinary that a fire can ignite, and
Speaker 2: look at what happens with all of a sudden in
Speaker 2: a matter of and We've heard Amy report on this,
Speaker 2: We've heard this on national news. A fire can start
Speaker 2: and then double in a matter of hours, and you
Speaker 2: just never know when.
Speaker 3: It's going to happen. So there, we're not gonna be
Speaker 3: able to stop arsonists.
Speaker 2: We're not going to be able to stop fires ignited
Speaker 2: by lightning, although that's pretty rare, but something can be Well,
Speaker 2: you can arrest arsenists, but you know, what do you
Speaker 2: do about arsenists other.
Speaker 3: Than arrest them?
Speaker 2: But what can be done is lower the risk of
Speaker 2: fires by power lines, and that seems to be the
Speaker 2: majority of fires that occur in wooded areas, and so
Speaker 2: they're doing everything they can. They have to because the
Speaker 2: liability is so insane. The reason PG and E is
Speaker 2: the big news is because it is the largest utility
Speaker 2: that we have in California, seventy thousand square miles. They
Speaker 2: cover in northern central California, and so there's a lot
Speaker 2: of work they have to do and it's going reasonably well.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: The reality is if you are even in high risk areas,
Speaker 2: and this is like the recall of the air bags,
Speaker 2: since you have so many to do, what do you
Speaker 2: do about the ones that are not being able to
Speaker 2: be fixed for years. If you're talking about with for example,
Speaker 2: in the airbag millions had to be recalled. Okay, if
Speaker 2: you're number one, or two or five, it's going to
Speaker 2: happen very quickly.
Speaker 3: What happens if you're number three million?
Speaker 2: And that's the case going on, which is a lot
Speaker 2: of reason why they changed how they deal with the
Speaker 2: fires ignited about power lines. First of all, the years
Speaker 2: it would take, the extraordinary effort and the money that
Speaker 2: would be spent, and they're saying, it's better off. We're
Speaker 2: better off, they're better off dealing with these sensors, grabbing
Speaker 2: them early. And if you're going to clean vegetation, which
Speaker 2: they're going to in the high high risk areas as
Speaker 2: opposed to every place else.
Speaker 3: Okay, a quick word about lawsuits.
Speaker 2: One of the things that is fun, and this was
Speaker 2: a law school where I really enjoyed this stuff, is
Speaker 2: the history of something called emotional distress, right, either negligent
Speaker 2: or intentional emotional distress. Now, historically you had to be
Speaker 2: hurt to also have an emotional distress lawsuit. Going emotional distresses,
Speaker 2: you're not hurt, it's just the emotions, and the law
Speaker 2: said you had to actually be hurt before you could
Speaker 2: file for emotional distress. Okay, now that changed a bit,
Speaker 2: and for example, mothers seeing their kids run over. All right,
Speaker 2: mother wasn't hurt, but you know, that sort of reached
Speaker 2: the level where emotional distress flew. Another one that's really neat,
Speaker 2: which is almost universe, is when families are dealing with
Speaker 2: dead people. There are some cases that I remember, for example,
Speaker 2: on the way to the grave site and the pallbearers
Speaker 2: are bringing the coffin and Uncle Murray falls out the
Speaker 2: bottom of the coffin and then starts rolling, and people
Speaker 2: were there, the family members were there. There was a
Speaker 2: lawsuit for emotional distress. Okay, fair enough, and now it's
Speaker 2: more sort of accepted. But this is here's why it's
Speaker 2: going to go. This is about as family oriented emotional
Speaker 2: distress as it exists.
Speaker 3: Jesse Peterson is thirty one years old.
Speaker 2: She is a Type one diabetic and has a diabetic
Speaker 2: She has a seizure. She came in she had some
Speaker 2: kind of an episode, so she calls nine to one one.
Speaker 3: She gets to the hospital. Okay, fair enough.
Speaker 2: And the family doesn't know this and they start looking
Speaker 2: for her file a missing person's where the hell she?
Speaker 3: Where is she?
Speaker 2: So they said that they found out that she went
Speaker 2: to the hospital. The hospital never notified them that she
Speaker 2: had died at the hospital. They were led to believe
Speaker 2: that she had checked out of the hospital on her
Speaker 2: own against medical advice. Well it turns out she didn't
Speaker 2: and they were told she checked out. So they're now
Speaker 2: doing the search. And I mean they're doing the search
Speaker 2: with posters and calling the police, and they're on the internet,
Speaker 2: and they're telling friends and they have strangers looking for them.
Speaker 3: Okay, here's the problem.
Speaker 2: She had called her mom, asked her to pick her
Speaker 2: up from the hospital when she felt better, and she
Speaker 2: comes to the hospital.
Speaker 3: Nope, she's checked out. Oh my god. And then they
Speaker 3: can't find her.
Speaker 2: So it turns out that she had died at the hospital,
Speaker 2: and the hospital telling mom and dad that she checked out.
Speaker 3: It turned out that she hadn't checked out.
Speaker 2: It turned out she had died that day, and they
Speaker 2: parked her in the morgue, and a death certificate, which
Speaker 2: has to be issued immediately upon the death of someone
Speaker 2: in the hospital, wasn't issued until a year later, when
Speaker 2: they discovered that she was camped in the morgue and
Speaker 2: the family finally found out about it, and here comes
Speaker 2: a lawsuit.
Speaker 3: Asking for twenty five million dollars.
Speaker 2: Now, when I started this segment, I told you about
Speaker 2: lawsuits for emotional distress, right, dealing with for the most part,
Speaker 2: family members and death, Uncle Murray falling out of the
Speaker 2: bottom of the casket and rolling along in front of everybody.
Speaker 2: Big big settlements, moms getting seeing their children interviewed, seeing
Speaker 2: their children injured, Big big settlements.
Speaker 3: And I think is going to.
Speaker 2: Be added to the law school curriculum and cases of.
Speaker 3: Negligent infliction of emotional distress.
Speaker 2: This one hospital saying, yeah, your daughter left, she checked out.
Speaker 3: In fact, she died.
Speaker 2: And by the way, it isn't until a year later
Speaker 2: the hospital lets the information out she.
Speaker 3: Fell through the cracks.
Speaker 2: So the lawsuit, of course is for intentional or is
Speaker 2: for emotional distress. Now they're not only asking for compensatory
Speaker 2: that is the suffering that the family has undergone, which
Speaker 2: there no one's going to argue that deadn't happen, But
Speaker 2: they're also asking for punies, punitive damages, saying the hospital
Speaker 2: was so reckless that it's almost they intended to do this.
Speaker 2: It was so insanely negligent, that punitive payment should be
Speaker 2: made gonna happen. But the compensatory, the infliction of emotional distress.
Speaker 3: That's going to fly. Hey Bill on that one.
Speaker 1: If you say they knowingly said that she left when
Speaker 1: they don't have the paperwork, when it wasn't done properly,
Speaker 1: you couldn't get punitive damages.
Speaker 2: Yeah you might, but there but you're gonna have to prove.
Speaker 2: I mean, intent is not.
Speaker 3: Say say we lost her.
Speaker 2: We can't find that's and that's what they're going to say.
Speaker 3: She checked out, right, she fell through the cracks. Someone
Speaker 3: thought she checked out.
Speaker 2: Maybe the record said we don't know enough about this,
Speaker 2: but uh, it's I don't think punies are gonna fly.
Speaker 2: They might, I don't know. In front of a jury,
Speaker 2: I mean, you never know what's going to happen. This
Speaker 2: is not going to be a bench trial. First of all,
Speaker 2: it's going to settle. I mean, there's no way that
Speaker 2: the hospital is going to defend itself in a lawsuit.
Speaker 2: I mean, can you imagine what a jury's going to
Speaker 2: do under these circumstances. By the way, the hospital, when
Speaker 2: asked for a comment, said, quote, we extend our deepest
Speaker 2: sympathies to the family during this difficult time.
Speaker 3: We're unable to comment on pending litigation.
Speaker 2: And by the way, that's not them just being obnoxious
Speaker 2: about it. No lawyer in the world is going to
Speaker 2: let a client talk about something on a lawsuit on
Speaker 2: this level. All right, This is kf I Am six
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