This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI A M.
Six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. I actually thought it was gonna I thought today was supposed to be somewhat sunny.
It was sprinkly all morning. See what you get for thinking that's my problem.
But by again, by the later this afternoon, there will be some more showers coming in through southern California. I don't know if it's going to be stronger, but it is going to be the same style of storm that we saw over the last couple of days, with just some steady rain. Probably dinner time ish tonight through tomorrow morning is what we're looking at in terms of the rain. Yesterday I had the weirdest, uh, the weirdest rain related car issue. I was driving home and I hit a
puddle on the right side of the car. It was sort of in the curb there, and it's not a deep puddle. I've seen it before when it rains, it's a commonplace for there for a puddle to develop. But I hit this puddle and immediately I heard this noise on the side of the car, and I realized that something from the puddle had gotten jammed up somewhere in the wheel well, and it was just kind of making this noise, not loud, not crazy loud. There's no place for me to pull over and check it out or
anything like that. But I got all the way too
close to my house. I pull over in like a Ralph's parking lot, and I get out of the car, and I realized that on that side of the car, the splash from the puddle had ripped a piece of would you call it molding, plastic molding that is that runs from the back of the front wheel well just along the bottom of the car to the front of the back wheel well, so it's like what a four maybe five foot piece of plastic, and it had snapped off of the front half of that, so it was
kind of bent under itself and was dragging on the roadway. The whole time it was sticking out, nobody said anything to me. I passed all kinds of people stopped at plenty of stoplights, and nobody did the thing where they're like pointing at the hey, hey, that thing is.
Hanging off of your car. Nobody cares anymore?
It is it that nobody cares or they they assume that I know that there's this giant piece of plastic hanging off of my car.
And I don't.
I mean, is that nobody cares? I guess, oh, Michelle, you're so jaded. I would have said something, well, I hope.
So that's the thing is if there's no way to tell and listen, if I was in another car, if I saw that on someone else's car and I pull up next to him and I roll down the window, even if it's raining, and just go, hey, you got a thing sticking out. It's dragging on the road there.
And the.
Best thing they could say is, yeah, I know, I'm going to get it fixed right now.
That's it.
If you see somebody with a flat tire, you reach out and you point, you go, hey, your tire's flat. Because a lot of people don't know what it feels like to drive on flat tire these days, because there's so many sensors in the car, they assume that the car is going to tell them in their car or
when their tire is flat. It was just as strange as that I made it all the way home, and I mean I was driving for a good ten to fifteen minutes with this thing dragging on the side of the car, and I didn't I didn't realize that's what that was. Easily snapped back into place the car, you would never be able to tell the difference.
Like it was. It didn't cause any damage.
There's a couple of scrapes on the bottom of the thing, but once you snap it back into place, the scrape side of it actually disappears.
Under the car, so you'll never see it. There's just if you see somebody with something hanging off of your car, tell them to tell them you sound like Jimmy Stewart. My car, my car. Oh just marry. You'll never know. You'll never guess what happened to you married? My car? Those falling apart. Nobody told me what am I supposed to do? Mary? What do you want? Mary? You want me?
You want to you want to tire that's not flat, Murray, Just pull it down from the moon and I'll.
Give it to you.
Office space is coming to a government agency near you.
What would you say you do here?
I mean there are thousands of government employees who are sitting at a table across from the bobs and trying to justify their existence at the bottom of the hour, we're going to talk more about what's going on with this Department of Government Efficiency and Elon Musk's plan to try to trim some of the fat that exists in the federal bureaucracy. Why Democrats are so upset about it. Right, Republicans are letting this guy do what he wants to do.
And the team of.
People he's got a core group of people that he has I guess deployed, for lack of a better term, he deployed to take over some of these agencies and to dig into at least the computer codes that exist around the Department of the Treasury, the Office of the USAID, the CIA. Even so, we'll talk about some of these literal kids that are involved with the Department of Government
Efficiencies Office of Geek Executives. That's okay, you could change that. Yeah, I'm sure somebody is probably going to make a T shirt of that. But nothing, there's nothing inherently wrong with a twenty year old who is a master coder going
in and looking at computer codes. I think there's this impression that you've got twenty year olds with beer cans and chocolate stains on their T shirts going through and making decisions about what government agencies and specific workers are valuable and are not.
That's not what these guys are doing.
But we're going to start with what's going on with this plan for Gaza. Yesterday we were talking about President Trump's surprise announcement that he wants to turn Gaza into the riviw area of them vy era of the or of the Middle East. I shouldn't say the Mediterranean, since there is already a riviera there, but the the riviera of the sorry riviera of the Middle East. I said yesterday, he doesn't have a plan for this. He's just spitballing here.
Apparently I was wrong. This is something he's talked about for months, and in fact may have gotten the idea from his son in law, Dimple's Kushner. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about what's going on with Gaza. We got doze a lot of fire coverage from next hour. There's a lot of interesting stuff that's coming up about our fires, both in Altadena and over in Pacific Palisades. And guests who sat down with President Trump yesterday, your Governor Gavin Newsom.
We'll talk about that conversation late in the show as well.
I'm glad your co host said it. Yeah, Gary, nobody cares how many cars you drive by on the highway that half their front or rear bumper is hanging off. We don't care because some people are going to take that as, I don't know, an aggressive move these days, So to tell people, huh, I guess just got to suck it up, brother, I did, and I'm everything's fine, yes.
But nobody cares what you're having issues with on your car.
Remember you're in California, self centered land.
That's a good point. But but why can't Why does it have to be that way? You can't just point and say, hey, your your tires flat?
You got something hanging off your car?
Gary, I live out in Oxnard. Been listening to you all for years. So I once tried to tell someone that neither of their break lights were on and we were at a stop sign. Stop light, excuse me? And I got screamed at for the entire remaining time of the red light, because of course I was an idiot and I should have known that they knew that both of their back break lights are out. Period. I will no longer be notifying people of issues.
Don't let one, you'll get the I'm telling you, if you roll down your window and try to say something, people will think you're trying to scream at them, you're going to get the finger.
Nobody cares.
I mean, the one guy said that it may be seen as an act of aggression.
I think that's a little bit over it.
Hey, good morning, Gary. You said you're going to talk about the doge thing. Yes, next, Why are people freaking out that he wants to have our tax money dwindle down to where we may get more money in our pockets or enough throwing it away on other people's needs somewhere else and not here. I don't understand that for the life of me. Why American citizens are upset that we're looking into our money being spent on foolish things makes no sense at all.
Well, we'll talk about it coming up at the bottom of the hour. But first we know that President Trump has said that the United States would somehow take control of Gaza voluntarily or maybe forcibly, evacuate the two hundred, sorry, the two million people that live there to other countries there throughout the Middle East, even though nobody has said that they would accept them Benjaminette Yahoo, the Prime Minister of Israel loves the idea you have to rebuild Gaza.
If you want to rebuild Gaza, you can't have.
This is the first good idea that I've heard.
It's a remarkable idea, and I think it should be really pursued.
And yesterday we were saying, I was saying specifically that this is not a thought out plan.
This is just sort of a pie in the sky thing.
It's also in terms of negotiations for what the future of Gaza looks like. It's an opportunity for Trump to do what he has done in the past and make a big, bold statement and then use that as the beginning of whatever negotiation he has in mind.
I said there's no plan to it.
Some people are saying there is a plan because he posted on truth Social today and I quote the Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting. The Palestinians would have already been resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities with new and modern homes in the region. They would actually have a chance to be happy, safe and free.
The US working with great development teams from all over the world would slowly and carefully begin the construction of what would become one of the greatest and most spectacular developments of its kind on Earth. No soldiers by the US would be needed. Stability for the stability for the region would reign. Now that's not a detailed plan, but it is more than just saying it's going to turn
into the riviera of the Middle East. So there's an article in The Telegraph, the London newspaper that says that this plan is something that's been rattling around his big
brain for some time. About a year ago, Jared Kushner, first son in law Dimple's Kushner, who in the previous administration was a Special Envoy to the Middle East, he said that he would in the when it comes to the future of Gaza, look at other places around the world that have been developed a long coastline like Gaza, and he said that Gaza possessed very valuable waterfront property and could become a hub for tourism, that is, if the people of Gaza were relocated, at least temporarily out
of the area. Now he's talking in Miami's referring to the offices of his investment firm, Affinity Partners, and he said at the time, I'm not sure anybody's talking about it, but it's a great idea.
Now.
Yesterday morning, sorry, Tuesday morning, after Trump talked about the plans for Gaza, the world was barely talking about anything else. Monday morning, when he was waiting for Benjamin Nett Yahoo to arrive White House, Aids told mister Trump that rebuilding Gaza would take about fifteen years, and Steve Whitkoff, who is the new envoy to the Middle East, said, just the cleanup process, when you're talking about removing debris from what is it sixteen months of Israeli bombing would take years.
The disposal effort in Gaza is we estimate three to five years just to dispose of all the things before you can look down but believe beneath the surface of the soil, and then before you get a master plan done.
By the way, Steve Whitcoff one of the first Western officials to actually walk through areas of Gaza.
He did that last week.
According to Wall Street Journal, Trump told net Yahoo months ago that the Gaza strip was a prime piece of real estate and that he should think about what kind of hotels could be constructed there. So this plan, whatever it looks like, whatever however it materializes, could potentially just be like I said the beginning of the negotiation plan, that would be his style.
But there are ways, it seems that it could be done. Again.
You've got to get whatever Middle East states, whether it's Jordan, Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, you've got to get more than just a couple of them to agree to resettle two million Palestinians. And no one is on board with that now because, among other things, taking away Gaza from Palestinians would mean there is no two state solution, and most of those other Middle East states have said that they want a
two state solution. Side note, Benjamin Netanyahu apparently gave the president a golden pager at this visit this week, a sort of a nod towards the detonation of those pagers in the hands of the Hesbalah operatives earlier in the year.
Later later last year, I should say, all right, what is it you.
Say you do here? The bobs are running amok. When it comes to the federal government, we'll talk about what DOJE is. And this team of very young but very smart young people who are at the center of this government takeover. It's a little harsh, but this government cleanup, that's what we'll call it. Shannon's out today, back tomorrow for some quick dental work. Economic losses from the fires they tore through La County could range from ninety five
billion up to one hundred and sixty four billion. This is a new report from a couple of UCLA economists. I mean that it would mean that these fires here in southern California last month would be the second costliest natural disaster in history. The Eton Fire and the Palisades Fire killed at least twenty nine people, burn more than thirty seven thousand acres, destroyed sixteen thousand structures, including more
than eleven thousand single family homes. And if you're just talking about the insured losses, they're talking about seventy five billion dollars. We'll talk next hour a little bit more about some of the fire stuff, including what the LAUSD is going to do to fast track rebuilding some of the schools, especially over the Palisades area, and then also the EPA and where they're going to be putting together a household hazardous waste of facility as they try to
clean out what's left of the palisades. A state of emergency has been declared on the Greek island of Santorini. It's been rattled, we told you, by dozens of earthquakes over the last several days, but a strong earthquake, a five point two is the most powerful to have hit that island in recent weeks. It happened at a depth of about three miles, and as we know that that's a pretty good shaker that you could feel pretty well.
Thousands of people have gotten off of the island and some of the neighboring islands and the GNC because they're afraid that they a massive earthquake is about to hit that could bring a tsunami, even a volcanic eruption. Perhaps, well, I feel better that I'm not the only one who would have pointed something out if my car was trailing a giant piece of plastic.
Hey gear bear, hey, on the freeway with a car problem, Yeah, I would have said something. I know a lot of people really don't care, but I know sometimes.
We both got it. But he was going to be nice to me, I think, And here it goes.
Oje is burrowing into different parts of the government and trying to root out different waste in the government. And of course it's the agency, this pseudo government agency that's led by Elon Musk. We talked about it yesterday in terms of people bad mouthing Elon Musk because he's a billionaire that that somehow means that he doesn't have the United States best interests at heart. And at the center of all of what DOGE is doing is a group of.
Kids.
I mean, they're all men legally, but this group of about six young men, all between the ages of nineteen and twenty four, they don't have very much, if any, government experience, and now they're playing critical roles in the Department of Government Efficiency because the Executive Order says that DOGE is tasked with modernizing federal technology and software to maximize government efficiency and productivity. They all hold jobs with DOGE. They're all weird job titles, and at least one of
these guys is working completely as a volunteer. So let's talk about who they are. Akash Boba, Edward Korustein, Luke Farrator, Gatti a cole Killian, Gavin Kleiger, and Ethan Shautran Wired Magazine put together sort of a profile of each of these guys and to give you an idea of what it is that they are doing. Akash Bolba went to Berkeley. He won the Management, Entrepreneurship and Technology Sorry, he was
in that program. According to a copy of his now deleted linked in, he was an investment engineering intern at the Bridgewater Associate's Hedge Fund as of last spring, an intern at Meta, an intern at Pallenteer also featured guest on a podcast with Aman Manazer, an engineer who interviews engineers about how they land their dream jobs. He talked about those experiences in a podcast last June.
Edward Corsateam.
May have just recently graduated from high school and was to have been enrolled at Northeastern University. According to a copy of his resume, he spent three months at Neuralink, which of course is the brain computer interface company that Elon must put together. Both of these guys are listed in records as experts at OPM and they report directly to Amanda Scales, which is a new chief of staff. Scales previously worked on talent for Xai, which is the
artificial intelligence company The Elon must put together. Employees at General Services Administration have said that Corstein has appeared on calls where workers were made to go over code they had written and to justify their jobs, which of course brings up the old office space meme.
What would you say you do here?
Coursu Teine also added to a call with GSA staff members using a non government Gmail address, and they were not given an explanation as to why who he was or why he was even on the call.
Now.
Luke Ferrator, another one of these was working GSA email has a working GSA email address. A former intern at SpaceX, currently a Field Fellow, according to his LinkedIn, dropped out of the UNI Diversity of Nebraska, Lincoln. This is a guy who, while he was at University of Nebraska Lincoln, was part of an award winning team that deciphered portions of an ancient Greek scholl a scroll using artificial intelligence. These are not dumb people. We're talking about this Department
of Government Efficiency. What is it actually doing while it's going through these different agencies?
Hey, Gary, I used to live right across the street from SpaceX.
Man, he had them kids out there.
Designing that super tunnel. Get down for Dodger Stadium to downtown Los Angeles or just a whole infrastructure on how that is. That's what he does, man, you know, and kids are super smart like that, So I don't see no problem with the young minds trying to come up with new ideals.
You know.
Yeah, I do know.
Hey, Gary, if Biden brought Bill Gates and and a bunch of twenty year olds to do the same thing Elon Musk is doing with that had been okay, I don't think so. I don't think it's okay what Elon's doing. They're not government employees. It just seems wrong and probably is well.
Listen, when it comes to that, I have been pretty consistent in that whatever government is needs to be reliant upon us for permission to do the things it does. Whether it's a member of Congress, whether it's a member of a bureaucracy, or whatever it is. We are the ones that drive the bus. So the more information we have about what's going on, I think is a good thing.
And if you agree with or don't agree with whatever funding exists at USAID or any of these other groups, then that will determine how you vote for people And like it or not, whether we voted for him or not, the guy in the White House is the one who's in charge. It was the same thing for Biden, it's the same thing for Trump. Now, there were a lot of people who obviously do not like this. What they refer to us a takeover democracy.
We're witnessing an assault on our democracy, make no mistake, and the Congressional Progressive Caucus will fight at every opportunity.
Senator Mark Warner, for example, You've got folks we don't know anything about.
Looking at potentially all of our personal information, all of the money.
Flows that go out of Treasury.
The Banking Committee needs to bring up the those folks who are illegally in.
Treasury and have them testify.
Now, speaking of the new Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Besson says, nobody's tampering with anything. Nobody's got access to any of the personal information that is being talked about the Treasury.
Our payment system is not being touched in terms of payments being stopped. That is happening upstream at the department level at Treasury. Our motto is to move deliberately and fix thing.
I will say this, there has to be Congressional oversight on this, Democrats have an opportunity to invite I don't know if they're going to subpoena, but they can obviously invite Elon Musk and anybody else at DOGE to come testify before them. But it's incumbent upon Republicans to make sure that he does do that. Now, going down this list of these other this group of six young engineers who are apparently sort of the task force that has
been unleashed on these different agencies. Gavin Kleiger is a guy listed him as a special advisor to the Director of OPM Office of Personnel and Management, who's listed in internal records as a special advisor to the Director for Information Technology. This guy was at UC Berkeley until a few years ago. He worked for the company the AI company Data Bricks. He talks about his support for conservative politicians. He wrote a paper apparently in favor of Matt Gates
that's thinking ship Pete Hegseth as well. Cole Killian is a guy who also has an email associated with dough. She's currently listed as a volunteer on his resume says he attended McGill University through at least twenty twenty one, graduated high school back in twenty nineteen. His personal website also shows that he worked as an engineer at Jump Trading,
specializing in algorithmic and high frequency financial trades. And then the last guy in this group, Ethan Shautran, told Business Insider a few months ago he was a senior at Harvard studying computer science and also the founder of an open ai backed startup called energize Ai. He was the runner up in a hackathon that was held by Musk's AI company. They said he received about one hundred thousand dollars grand from open Ai to build a scheduling assistant
that he had come up with. Now, most of these guys have working GSA emails and a Suite level clearance, which means they work out of the agency's top floor, and they have access to physical bass and some IT systems. But it's not clear when they have the access to the IT system. Is it what Scott Bessen said at Treasury, which is they're just read only. They can't change anything, they can't access information, personal information that would be available or is it more than that? Now, if it's more
than that, that's a massive problem. And they got to figure that stuff out, because that kind of information wouldn't necessarily have anything to do with working on government efficiency. If these guys are just computer coders, more power to them. Let's stop with this belief that somehow outside eyeballs on what the government is doing is inherently bad. It's actually
inherently good. These things need to be exposed. We have to know what the government is spending money on for us to make decisions about who we're going to put in office next time. All right, up next, the evacuation alerts during the eaton Fire came too late. We know that there's a new report on why it happens. You miss any part of the show, go back and catch the podcast KFIAM six forty dot com, slash Garyanshannon, or the iHeart app or Apple Podcasts or Spotify anywhere you find your podcast.
Just type in Gary and Shannon. We'll be back right after this. You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show.
You can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.