You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty and good morning everybody. Bill Handle Here.
It is a Tuesday morning, November twenty six, and Neil is out today Tomorrow. He's back Thursday the Thanksgiving show that he does every year, filling in for me if you will, six to nine. But it's his show where he answers question to call in show and give you tips on Thanksgiving cooking and eating. So that is this Thursday, and then Friday. Filling in for me is Wayne Resnik,
and we're all back on Monday. And on Tuesday, we're all at the Anaheim White House for Catarina's Club starting at five am and at six am.
The rest of the rest of us go aboard real jew bagels at six.
Always very impressive, and pastries, coffee, et cetera starting at five now. Yesterday a special council, Jack Smith, formally asked that the criminal cases against Donald Trump be dismissed and no surprise there so he dropped the twenty twenty election subversion prosecution and the charges accusing Trump of mishandling classified documents, and he stressed decisions not about the strength of his case.
He thinks Trump is still guilty, but his reasoning was based on the Justice Department's long held belief the Constitution prohibits prosecutions against sitting presidents. And by the way, even if prosecutors had believed they could have kept the cases on life support, which was never going to happen, the President elect had already said he's got to fire Smith instantly, and so the case is going to be dropped. Now that usually that breaches the usual norms of a special
Council investigation. But then again, the current administration is following the special norms, following procedure that the Justice Apartment has the fire wall between a president and the DOJ.
Trump is blowing that wide open.
The Justice Apartment is simply going to be part of the executive branch.
That's it. He'll be telling it what to do.
There will be no separation, there will be absolutely no firewall there.
So how did this happen?
Well, Trump's lawyers, who are very good, and clearly he has the money to pay Trump's lawyers. The straw that broke the Cammell's back was the slow walking courts. The legal arguments, some of them are ridiculous by Trump's lawyers, but still had to be heard and all of that.
It was delay that did it.
And the Supreme Court ruling in Trump's favor about immunity for a sitting president if what he does is quote as in a national as a national act by a president president, and then we also have you what normally happens, though it doesn't happen during a presidency.
Trump has said outright he is going to investigate.
Everybody who voted against him, who went as his prosecution, straight out investigate. He said he will arrest those people and he will put them in jail. And usually sitting presidents don't say that. It's a very strange way of doing it. And so the federal judge in Florida who dismissed a lot of these federal cases is a woman who's a Trump appointee. And I want to make something very clear, is that he got this federal judge because he pushed for it.
And the judiciary allowed him to have it. That's not the way it works.
How it works is there is a rotating panel and it is by luck you get a judge or you don't get a judge. And in federal court, depending on who the judge, is you're gonna get nailed if you're gonna have a hanging judge, or you're gonna have.
A liberal judge.
Glorian for example, got the one judge that actually was on his side when he argued that the federal government set him up.
Why is that because this federal judge.
As a kid, was in an internment camp during World War Two as a Japanese American, he did not trust the government a whole lot. So in the case of this judge, and her name is.
I always forget.
I'm so horrible at names in any case, I'll come up with it and start screaming at it. In just a moment, she was so pro Trump, is so pro Trump, that virtually every motion made before her by the Trump team she granted.
And at the end of that process.
Where she was on Trump's side the whole time, she dismissed the entire case. Judge Eileen Cannon is her name, And it was simply the former president the new president getting just the best draw the cards that he could.
So there's pure luck there in that case.
And in terms of Trump's position, you remember when he said.
When he was running, I think the first time out.
I could stand on Broadway in New York high noon, shoot someone and I would get acquitted.
You know that's true. I am absolutely believing that.
And there's going to be a presidency that is going to be unlike any presidency we have ever seen.
And before we go, I want to ask Amy a quick question.
Okay, because you're such a Disneyland fan, I'm digressing because how.
Unusual for this show.
How much do you think it would cost to go to Disneyland today if you looked at inflation from nineteen fifty five when Disneyland opened till today, how much you think would be the cost of actually going to Disneyland if you adjust for inflation?
I have no idea eleven dollars.
Now, granted, Disneyland is a very no, it's a very different place. Yeah, and there's a twenty dollars twenty two dollars minimum wage, you know, I mean.
Yes, I'm not arguing that was a dollar minimum wage.
I'm not arguing that. All I'm all I'm doing is asking that question. Okay, Okay, Disneyland.
What year nineteen fifty five? Good? What month? Oh uh?
Where's Nick Poliochini When I need them?
I don't remember July. Oh, and it was super hot and super hot. The pavement hadn't all the way that's right, the asphalt people had said at Lottle heels, that's true. Are you thinking into this cement? Who was it was televised.
I've done a whole history of that with ABC and the connection. Do you know who the host was of the of the televised broadcast?
Who was the host of artlind Cletter? Remember artlind Cletter? I know the name. Okay.
He was the most highly paid television star on television at the time. Friends of Walt Disney. Walt Disney asked him to host the television broadcast. He said, now you can't afford me, you know, just.
I'll do it.
I'll tell you what I'll do, Walt Disney, just give me the concession for the Kodak booths selling the film in Disneyland for ten years.
Smart. He said, it was the best deal he ever made in his life. There's a whole story there.
It's a fun story about the opening of Disneyland, which now it's history.
I love history, as you know.
All right, Day one tariffs are kicking in, according to the President elect.
And I'll tell you.
Who is is a group of people that are most in favor of Donald Trump. We're going to get the most nailed by Donald Trump. I'll explain that when we come back. Bob Cummings also is there at Disneyland at the opening. Who's Bob Cummings.
He was a big television star. Oh at that time too.
Yeah, all these obscure people go figure, you know what was Hitler's dog name?
Blondie? Blonde Blondie.
Okay, for those of you that don't care or think I'm spending too much time or not looking into it, you should because life is going to change dramatically under a Trump presidency, because it has sort of been the same both through Republican and through democratic administrations over the last.
Twenty thirty years.
One of the things that the President lex said He's going to impose tariffs on all products coming in the United States from Canada, Mexico, and China his first day in office.
What's that going to do is going to scramble supply chains.
It's going to impose pretty heavy costs and companies that were American companies that rely doing business with these economies. On truth social he mentioned caravan of immigrants making his way to the United States. He's done that before. And he said that these tariffs that he is imposing will remain in effect until such time as drugs, in particular fentanyl and all illegal aliens stop this invasion of our country.
So he's connecting the two and are they're not necessarily connect the bull but there are some And in a separate post, he threatened an additional ten percent on products coming from China, although he has said one hundred percent. We don't know it whether he's going to go one way or the other. We know there's going to be tariffs,
so I think they're going to be tariffs. And this, if you put them together, these threats, tariff threats, basically an ultimatum against the three largest trading partner of the US, and it's going to just create chaos and our diplomatic economic relationships, probably even before it's already happening now before January twentieth. The currencies of canaon Mexico are now sliding against the dollar the Chinese embassy war.
No one will win a trade war.
There are some serious implications for American industry, auto manufacturers, food packagers, particularly farmers, farmers are going to get nailed because of the illegal alien situation.
Because the third of the farmers.
According to a study done by the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, a third of the farm workers are illegal migrants. Now, the people will own the farms. Technically they're following the rules, but they're not. And it's very easy to break the rules on that. And then the argument's going to be who's going to pick the strawberries? Right Conservatives say, well, it's Americans will pick the strawberries because these illegal aliens are taking jobs. How many people
do you know pick strawberries or cabbage or oranges. I don't know any even if it was twenty dollars an hour would they do that. They won't work, and they won't work at fast food chains, much less pick vegetables.
Off of the ground.
Now, one of the things is that even during his administration, prior Trump threatened tariffs and use them as a negotiating ploy. And I want to say a word now about tariffs, the threat of tariffs and dealing with foreign countries, particularly China. Exports are more important to a country than imports. Balance of trade, the healthier economy means that a company, a country is exporting goods more than importing goods. We have a balance of trade that is miserable. We have a
negative balance and have for years and years. And the amount of money in terms of negative trade is it's either three different levels insanely insane number. The second level is a prohibitively punitive intergalactically number, and the third level is gee.
I didn't even know we could do that number. And particularly.
China, because they're not fair and previous presidents have rolled over.
That's it. They've just rolled over with China.
China exports to us in a huge way, far more than they import. They have tariffs, they have rules, they make it possible country for companies to do business there. I mean, we have trade agreements that they breach constantly. And the only president that we've had that will in fact hold them to the fire, I think is Trump.
Trump has balls that you have to give him.
Agree with him, don't agree with him, and I disagree with him on so many issues. He's the only one that had the guts to move the embassy in.
Israel to Jerusalem.
Jerusalem has been the capital of Israel since nineteen forty eight, when it was declared a sovereign country when it said, we are an independent country.
This is our capital until Trump moved the capital to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, moved our embassy.
No one else would do that. So we're in for a ride. Farmers are going to get nailed. I'll tell you that right now.
They're going to end.
They're among the most supportive of the administration. They voted in favor of Trump in massive numbers, overwhelmingly, and they're they're gonna get nailed.
It's that simple. We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens.
I'm going to follow up on this one big time and again I'm going to reiterate. If you think I'm spending too much time on talking about what's happening or what's going to happen during the Trump administration, mark my words. It is going to affect us deeply across the board in a way that I don't believe a president a presidency has affected us. Okay, fair enough, Now, we passed Prop thirty six overwhelmingly this past election, like seventy percent.
What Prop thirty six do?
It undid a lot of Prop forty seven, which we pass to reduce the penalties for misdemeanor crimes or felony crimes, especially in the shoplifting world, down to misdemeanors. And now what that was during the movement of the anti police movement that defund the police movement. Well those days are gone and that's just dead as a doornail. Now we're going the other way. Now we want to nail people
we don't like, criminals. And instead of blaming the police and the courts, you know what, we're blaming criminals for criminal acts. What a shocker, How novel is that? Well, the problem is if we're making what used to be felonies misdemeanors and bringing back to felonies, that means jail time. And the problem with jails in La County is that they suck.
Over crowding like crazy.
Not enough money you spent. Doesn't really even matter how much money you spent. Men's Central Jail has to be torn up billions of dollars and you even have, for examples, the Juvenile Hall, the largest juvenile facility that has to close. And all of that is going to cost tons of money.
Peter Eliasburg, who is Chief Counsel of the Aslo of Southern California, who was involved in filing a lawsuit against the county, of which was settled, said, anyone who goes into jails now, particularly men central, would be appalled to the conditions. And if you add more crowding, that becomes crazy. And he is effectively saying, you don't want what you wish for what you want, you don't want.
Does that make sense, No, of course not.
What Prop thirty six did was effectively, we make certain crimes well more serious. That means more jail time. Adding thousands of inmates to state prisons and county jails would slow down the system, not only the case resolution but trials court systems slow it down and actually cut available funds for mental health and drug treatment and victim services by the tens of millions of dollars every year. And part of Prop thirty six was to increase money for
those services. The new DA is looking at them. He has not said anything, and that's Nathan Hawkman. He doesn't know how he's gonna deal with the new increases and what is now considered serious crimes which used to be and then was, and then did not and now is again. How do you describes himself? Is he a conservative who wants to punish inmate.
Who wants to punish bad guys?
Is he a liberal who thinks that there's no such thing as a bad guy.
It's our fault.
It's society's fault that creates bad people, that creates criminals. He talks to himself. He described himself as having a.
Hard middle approach.
Doesn't like one, doesn't like the other, doesn't believe in MOUs incarceration or dcarceration.
And his pledge is to ensure.
That LA Counties jails and juvenile halls are safe, constitutional, rehabilitative.
They're not. They are not safe, they're not.
Constitutional according to a federal judge or two that has ordered them to change. And they're certainly not rehabilia to how does that pronounce rehabilitative?
Rehabilitative?
Very good with words, and he paraphrased the quote, which was really interesting.
You don't even usually hear a politicians say this.
He quoted from Fyodor Dostoyevsky Russian novelists right Warren piece who said you can judge the quality of a civilization by the quality of its jails and prisons. Dan Hawkman said, under that Lens La County has failed, and it has so we don't know the outcome yet are we willing to pay the.
Price which is very expensive to keep people in prison?
If the United States has more prisoners than any country in the world, both in terms of number and per capita. Now China would have more prisoners, but they just kill people. You get a traffic ticket in China, they either shoot you by the side of the road or they shoot you in jail. So other countries, well, you go to Scandinavian countries, virtually no crime.
Certainly there are no.
Gun crime because we're the only country of the world, that civilized country, that is first world country.
We're just different that has gun ownership. We're just very different. That's all. The problem is.
We have a huge number of criminals, more so per capita than other countries, and more people in jail. And under Prop thirty six, we're gonna have even more people in jail.
All right, yesterday, big news in the world of the Menendez brothers.
By the way, this story is being covered internationally all over the world.
That's what internationally means.
I think, see, I gotta tell you, you listen to me, you get the scoop It is a story of the two brothers killing their parents and me, just as I said, And it's a southern California story, so you could imagine how it engaged. We are here and they were convicted of killing mom and dad and sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole.
This was thirty five years ago. There were two trials.
First of when we had a hungary and a lot of evidence was presented about the father raping Lyle.
I mean, sexual abuse of this kid.
Unbelievable, And the jury hung on this second trial and the judge didn't let that information in, didn't let that evidence in, so it was an easy conviction for the jury. So here we are thirty five years later, and the family members of the menandez brothers, I mean virtually all of them are pleading with the court, pleading with the judge to re sentence the brothers. Re sentencing them means that they're walking out the door because they get credit
for time served. Also, the governor is being asked for clemency. You know who asked them for clemency, George Gascon and others. It's almost universal, all of us, and I put myself in that category. Are on their side. One family members against it, uncle and some prosecutors, but the rest of the people out there, and if they took a poll, it would be absolutely overwhelming. So we know what happened,
we know what's going on now legally. But I want to share with you what these two have done in their thirty five years in prison, not just model prisoners, which means no disciplinary action, but have set up programs to help other prisoners, and I mean a big, big way, and not for publicity, not sake, not for the argument that they should be resentenced, because they simply did this to make their lives mean something. Lyle earned a BA degree in sociology from UC Irvine this year, working on
his Masters and urban development. Eric is going to graduate from UC Irvine with a degree in sociology this fall. And one of the prisoners who we only have the name Abro, said Eric gave me a sense of purpose. By the way, Abro was sentenced to life without possibility of parole. And what Abro said is that Eric gave him, or Lyle gave.
Him a sense of purpose and was a mentor to me.
He and Lyle began a rehabilitation through the beautification project inmates, worked on upgrades for the prison, creating green spaces, painting a huge mural. Both of them have been involved in setting up programs that simply help prisoners, even to the point where not only did the prisoners admire them, but the prison guards themselves think that these two should be released.
And why is it so different now? What has changed? A couple things.
First of all, a lot of publicity talking about the kind of sexual assaults that happened upon Lyle during the course of growing up by his father. That's one TV movie, a few documentaries there's that, and we look at sexual abuse in a very different way. During the second trial, I mean, Lyle still testified as to what his dad did to him. The problem is there was no corroboration during the first trial. There are all kinds of corroboration.
People talked about it, they knew about it, but it was all secondhand stuff and it was the judge simply wouldn't let that in a trial, so he talked about it in the second trial about the abuse. One of the prosecutors has set out, right, there's this thing.
Is maile rape. It doesn't exist. Maile rape is just not a thing. It's being made up. We know very differently today.
So if I had to guess, I think they are going to be re sentenced, I think at the end of January. And by the way, why did the judge say we're going to wait till the end of January?
Two reasons.
First of all, he has to look at the documents, and there's boxes of documents. Also, he wants to know what Nathan Hockman is going to say the new DA coming in, because the Prosecutor's office have a lot of say this and they'll make the motion. And Governor Newsom, the gutless wonder that he is, won't grant clemency. He's kicking it over to Hawkman and say and says, you guys, deal with this, because he's not going to take the political hit for giving clemency. So when you look at
these two, they were separated. I mean, these guys are as close as brothers can be. They were separated for thirty years, they couldn't see each other, and then in San Diego a few years ago they were put together in the same prison.
So at least that he could be together. It's been brutal for them by the way they did commit murder. They admitted that.
Their argument is it was self defense because we are so afraid of what Dad was doing that we had no choice. Unfortunately for them, after the murder, they took the money from the estate and spent it on rolexes and cars, and that didn't bode well.
Didn't bode well at all.
So the ongoing story, all right, KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Catch my show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.