You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty.
It is a Wednesday morning, September eleventh, nine to eleven, twenty three years ago. Last night one of the most anticipated presidential debates that I can remember. And the politics, of course this year are insane, with Joe Biden dropping out because of well because he's falling apart because he got old very quickly as a matter of fact, and the main attack that the Republicans had against the opposing
presidential candidate disappeared when Kamala Harris became the nominee. So last night the debate and what happened, well, I think Trump either misread Kamala Harris underestimated her, or he didn't do enough prepping because he never does and that's how he operates, or some p well they just don't prep. And also she baited him, she goaded him, and she got him.
There's no question she.
Got him his advisors and we knew this from the beginning. And the argument was going to be she was going to have him go down that rabbit hole, and he followed her all the way down. And it's and I don't care which side of the coin you are I don't care if on policy issues you are in favor of one or the other. It's impossible to say that Donald Trump did a good job unless you are an a vowed Trump follower.
Where he literally could have just fallen off that stage.
And oh my god, he fell off that stage purposely, And didn't he do a good job.
She really cleaned his clock.
They disagreed on abortion, the economy, immigration, the war in Ukraine. I mean, there is no question, and Kamalee Harris, I think and Donald Trump also said in his statement, this country has very clear choices. Which way is it going to go? And unfortunately for the Trump campaign, he did was was expected of him. He was She baited him, He grabbed that bait. He did a horrible job in defending his position. Even when he has some strength, he threw it away.
She smiled, he glowered.
I mean, he was just upset, and you could see on his face how unhappy he was.
He spoke more. She dictated the terms wow.
And she literally from day minute one, she dominated this whole thing. She laid the bait, he took it, and it began with her needling Trump that his board supporters had been leaving his rallies, and that continued on with inherited riches from riches from his dad and even and this is Harris saying, even those of that worked for you think you are horrible, and mentioned former chiefs of staff and advisors. And he took the bait. My people, when they go to my rallies don't go away. They stay.
I have huge rallies. I've had the biggest rallies in the.
History of the world.
I mean, there was a lot of that, and I'm sure his advisors say, don't take that bait. Go to the issues. Go to the issues. Ignore that the size of rallies do not matter. People aren't bored.
She even went so.
Far and again this just got his goat looking at the camera and.
Say, let me tell you what I'm going to ask you to do. And as go to a Trump rally.
You go to a Trump rally, see how many people walk out, See how many people are bored. And of course did he take the bait. You bet he did. And that was all very planned out. She said, you will not hear him talk about your needs. You'll hear him talk about himself. And you know what he did. He talked about himself. I mean, whatever your policy issues are, why let her control the narrative. Take it away, go
the other way, talk about policy. If he thought she was going to collapse the way Joe Biden did, it did not happen. And you could see, you can just see in your mind's eye his advisors their heads in their palms, just shaking their slap their foreheads, going, oh my god, look what happened. He talked about not what the voters need, but about voters numbers on the crazy side. And I think this is the one that really got sort of everybody. And her response she just laughs. I
mean she spent a lot of time. You could see that rehearsing response, not verbally, but what she was going to look like, because they had the split screen most of the night. And he went right into immigrants are eating pets in Ohio.
He went right down that hole.
You know what.
I'm surprised he didn't actually have a placard and it talked about recipes. Here is how you cook a cat. I think that's the only thing that was missing last night. I don't care which way you go on this politically, you have to admit she cleaned his clock. You know, it's not that she cleaned his clock, as he cleaned his own clock. He did everything wrong, and she got him on his playbook. As a matter of fact, she started saying, you're gonna hear the same old playbook.
You're gonna hear the same grievances. You're gonna hear.
The same lies. Okay, so what happened? Grievances?
Lies?
Of course fact checking. He had over thirty of them, she had one or two, and he was right, and the Republicans are right, she deflected. There were times when she wouldn't answer and when asked, but you were. You've changed your mind on fracking, back and forth, back and forth, and on the border.
What happened. You wanted open borders.
And now you want closed borders, and she deflected, I believe in fracking. I don't believe in open borders. Look what we have done the Biden Harris administration. But instead of calling her on that what ended up happening, He went down his old I have massive numbers of people at my rallies and then just I mean just really crazy stuff the immigrants eating dogs and cats that went around the internet with the crazies, and he glombed right onto that, and you shake your head and then just
straight out accusations that made no sense. You're going to take away every gun in America. Of course she's never said that, and she came right.
Back with I'm a gun owner. Tim Walls is a gun owner. I'm not going to take away our guns.
Israel will cease to exist if she is president. It will be destroyed as a country. Really, she's an advocate of Israel, always has been, and the issue is how it's being handled.
Gaza.
The number of Palestinians that have died in Gaza now over forty thousand, So it's a little bit more nuanced than that. He got nailed on abortion. She's really clear on abortion. I mean from day one, he's gone back and forth, proud of the fact that Roe v. Wade was overturned, took full credit for it. Yet at the same time, when asked, would you pass a federal ban on abortion, he went from yes, to know it's a state issue, to sort of dancing around that. On in
vitro fertilization. Oh my god, did he dance around that one. And that was a mistake because if he just outright said I am in favor of IVF.
It is that simple.
He did say, as a matter of fact, he went further than anybody. He said he wanted the government.
To pay for IVF.
Remember a couple of weeks always said that no Democrat has said that, short of maybe Bernie Sanders when he was drunk once and it.
Was well at the bottom line, she needled him. He took it. She said, you're not going to hear what he can do for you. You're gonna hear about his grievances.
Yep, he lost the election, it was rigged, Yep, all of the cases against him.
She brought it up too.
I mean, she brought up that he's a felon, that he's been convicted. And what he said is the DOJ has been weaponized all of these cases. And a lot of people believe that the DOJ has been weaponized. I don't think so, because the Biden administration and most administrations leave the Department of Justice alone. Man, that's independent. They don't They just don't get in the way. Richard Nixon certainly used the DOJ. You didn't see George Bush. You didn't see George H. W.
Bush. You didn't see Bill Clinton. You certainly didn't see Barack Obama.
Use the DOJ or the FBI as a weapon of as a method of weaponization. But I'll tell you what he also did, and again for anybody that really looks into it, he conflated the state and the federal that the Biden administration is weaponizing everything and implicitly said and he and Biden called the state and forced the state to go against him.
Do you know if a president ever did that, ever did that?
The first thing that any state official would say, mister president, Uh, this is not your jurisdiction, This isn't you okay, this is a state issue. I can't imagine any legitimate prosecutor or state official not saying that. The bottom line is, I think he blew it. Last night he had a shot on Afghanistan arguing that the Biden administration blew it on Afghanistan. And by the way, not too many people disagree with that, but he had taken on the defensive end.
She went right after him, saying, you had the Taliban at Camp David. And he comes back with at some point and she's arguing, the authoritarians love him. He actually talked about how much Prime Minister Victor orbon Of Hungary thinks he's the greatest leader in the entire world. He told me I'm the greatest president that's ever lived, or something along those lines.
Man, you know what.
You've got stuff on here side, Donald Trump, you didn't use them last night. You did not use what you had. You fell into her trap very well rehearsed.
Of course.
I don't think there was a spontaneous moment that she had, not a one. She almost could have been reading off a teleprompter behind his shoulder. Well rehearsed, knew what she was saying, knew where she was going. You can see she practiced and practiced and practice, and she got him. She got him, and you will see. We'll see what the polling has to say. Now does that translate into votes?
We don't know yet. We don't know.
I think what also hurt Trump last night, maybe even more than her performance in his performance, is Taylor Swift.
Came out and endorsed him.
That is massive. So we'll see how that turns out. All right, Blake Trolley is at the Bridge fire in the ANGELUS National Force and this has become a monster.
So what's the latest, Blake.
Yeah, Well, this wildfire yesterday, Bill really exploded in growth. This fire yesterday morning was burning less than four thousand acres. It's now nearly reached fifty thousand acres, growing more than ten times its size. And we're told a lot of this growth happened yesterday afternoon. Yesterday when I was covering the Line fire, a red flag warning was issued for that fire because a wind gus that could hit twenty
five miles an hour. Now, a similar red flag warning was also issued for the Bridge fire, which at the time was burning in the Mount Baldy Slash Rightwood area. Well, what we're told, and I'm trying to get an exact timeline of this, is that this fire really just took off blazing yesterday afternoon, again exploding more than ten times its size. Now, while the weather was a challenge, part
of the challenge as well was the topography. I mean, if you look at Mount Baldy, this is a really steep high you know, rugged mountain, and a lot of the vegetation in there these are pine tree shrubs, chaparral.
They haven't burned in years.
So what you had was kind of this perfect storm event with winds kicking up. You had old and also very effective fire fuel all sitting in this fire's path, and when these winds picked up, this fire really exploded. Thirteen people have been injured, several homes have been destroyed. There's video all over social media. In some cases you see people trying to spread down their homes in a desperate attempt to save their homes. Other videos show homes
both in Rightwood and Mount Baldy up in flames. I mean, this thing really came roaring through the Mountain. High Resort in Rightwood actually has cameras that are positioned throughout the resort and they kind of show you different shots of the mountain.
A lot of ski resorts do this well. One of those.
Cameras watched in real time as the ski lifts went up in flames. I saw videos last night of people being evacuated. Evacuation orders went out yesterday afternoon for Rightwood. But keep in mind, this was a very explosive fire, so both deputies and San Berardino County fire personnel had to get into the community of Rightwood. There was video of this as well, them rushing people out of these communities.
So this fire, which really for a while was remaining somewhat calm, really exploded yesterday and is now the biggest and the most impactful fire burning here in southern California.
It's just crazy as to what's happening watching these fires. It's almost as if why do they even bother? Because these things are roaring to such an extent that the Fire Department of various assets can't keep even close to dealing with it. And if they're burning in the wrong direction or the right direction as far as we're concerned, of course, away from communities, home structures, et cetera, you.
Would think just let them burn out because you can't keep up with this.
I mean, when they're going like this, is there any effective way of fighting this or slowing it down?
I think in this case, this would have been a
really hard one to stop. What I'm told is that when you look at the topography through Mount Baldy, these canyons that are covered in these old, dry and again old ponderosa pines, you know, big pines, and also just a lot of chaparral in the lower ele you know, or the lower parts of this of this vegetation, and you pair that with the shape of this canyon, I'm told this really just creates a vacuum and that this fire just came racing through the area yesterday afternoon and
again we saw it spread into right wood very quickly, and yeah, this became a very dangerous situation. And as you say there, Bill, I mean, think about this. We've already had we already have a major fire burning in Orange County, a major fire burning in Samernardino County. Air resources on those I know last night they had requested air resources for this fire to come and help with
structure defense. I'm also told that these air resources are trying to help kind of spot areas where they can put firefighters because they're trying to get them in and out of these areas that are really steep to try to fight this fire. So this is a really, I think, a really tough one. Just what I'm told is that it's really the topography in this area that has not only allowed this fire to grow, but really kept firefighters from making the progress they want to make.
All right, Blake, thank you.
I'm sure we're going to be talking you through with you throughout the morning as this thing progresses. Unfortunately, Blake Trolley Okay, if I's owned Blake Trolly there at the fire. All right, here's another story I'm gonna take away from fires for a moment, and that has to do with philanthropists are investing fifteen million dollars in local news because local news has effectively fallen apart, and it is something
that we need and we don't have. And so what I'm doing, I'm asking Steve Gregory to join us only because well, because of his very long history of dealing with news, he's been a local reporter for many, many years. Steve based on this and the philanthropists are investing fifteen million dollars. And we're talking about the Eli broad Foundation, the American Journalism Project, the Spiegel Family Fund, all of these getting together and spending fifteen million bucks to augment
to bring back local news. So, Steve, who by the way, is host of Unsolved Saturday Nights and on Sunday it's Studio six forty. Steve, let's talk a little bit about what you have experienced the demise of local news and news conferences and what coverage is now today.
Well, I don't I wouldn't characterize it as the demise of local news because I think that local news is still being serviced. I think it's just being done differently.
The reason that you don't see as many reporters in the streets anymore like we used to is because the cell phone, the smartphone has sort of replaced the reporter, and that means that there are less opportunities for reporters to go to do things because they don't need to do And in this particular case, investing in local news, I was a little baffled because the article that you sent me for reference material, if you look at the partnerships that they're creating with the local MPR affiliate and
a former editor with the LA Times and other organizations, the thing that really caught my attention is that they want to bring unbiased, factual and objective reporting to underserved communities. And I thought to myself, well, that's not happening already. What do you think. I think that's a disingenuous statement.
Well, here was my take, and the reason I brought this in line is because to your point, because of cell phones, you don't need that many reporters. And when you talk about unbiased news reporting, you know, it's kind of hard to argue that that there number one isn't biased across the board. I know here kfire reporters tend to be as unbiased as possible. But you know, consider you've complained about this, we are just stretched thin, far more than we ever have been as far as my
knowledge and my experience is concerned. You don't think that there is a need to expand on local news reporting.
No, there is a need to expand on local news reporting. The money needs to go to more people. And I believe that this initiative that you're talking about said it could hire up to twelve new reporters to spread out in these local groups. I think one of the best
examples of local journalism was Patch. You remember the Patch No, that's where Yeah, so that I think people that listening that are listening to know that there were these Patch reporters that would live in the communities and they had it broken up into quadrants, and those Patch reporters had to live in the communities in which they reported on and I would see them at a lot of different press conferences. But unfortunately that business model fizzled. But that
was the classic example of community journalism. But what I'm concerned about here, and toil your point, yes, I think there's a need for more local journalism. But it's in the need of like, instead of layoffs, put the money into the existing news organizations. But the argument here is some of these smaller communities feel like they want their own stories told. Great, that's fine, put the money into those and let it and let it sort of organically grow.
My concern, what my concern was, is that the organizations behind it have a political bent.
Yeah, and you know, and when when I looked at this articles, it was just take a take off on uh, And why I wanted to bring you aboard is just the changes in local news. Sure, how local news has become I think less important because of you've got well frankly because you have a cable, et cetera. And the big news stories completely override the local news. Now we've got three reporters out with the fires. We've got Blake Trolley,
we got Michael Monk, we have Corbyn Carson. Is there any other radio station in southern California that would have three reporters out there? And I'm not saying this because I'm proud of what we are, Uh, it's certainly any other news talk station Do they do that the way we do?
Yes? In fact, that there are two other radio stations that I can tell you right now that have reporters at all the fires as well, and the local CBS radio affiliate and the local and PR affiliate both have reporters of the fires. That's that's standard procedure. But I think what you're experiencing is that the shortage and reporters is due to a couple of things. Funding, smartphones and people's attention span. They don't want a lot of people don't have the time to read and listen and dig
deep like they used to. They like headlines. Now the attention spans are much shorter.
Okay, that makes sense.
And by the way, when I'm going in a direction, and even if I'm wrong, you have to say, yes, Bill, I understand, You're absolutely right.
Okay, what is the direct one you're talking about?
This segment did not go the way I wanted it to go. Okay, just to let you know, are there any other radio stations, because I don't think so that have a Blake, Michael and a Corbin out there reporting on the three fires. Your point was, say no, Bill, only KFI does.
Well, then that would be a falsehood. Yeah, I don't do that.
Yeah, well, yeah, come on, it's my show. Come on, you know, I bring you a board to back me up, Steve, for God's sake.
Well, well then then cut me that way.
Okay, Yeah, you're right, you know what, And yeah, you screwed this one up.
You didn't.
You did not tell him that he was there to back up my point, right or wrong?
All I got. All I got was a link.
Okay, got it, I'll understand, talk about it.
No. But the point, you know, But the point I'm making, I think inevitably you went to the right place where I wanted to go, not as well as you did, uh, is that local news is not as important.
And I'm looking at the demise of that, having been behind.
This mic for thirty something years, and you know, it's not the same, and it's not going the way I think it should.
It's for the worst.
Well, I agree, Bill, And there is a problem right now covering local news because there are fewer people doing it. And so when I look at these these initiatives to put money in, like we haven't even talked about Google, remember that that settlement with Google in the state of California, And now they're going to put money in a bunch of local journalism too, but they're doing that without any
input from journalism groups, which is odd to me. But I think the bigger picture here is that people's appetite for news has changed. Yeah, and then I think the model has had to adjust to that.
Fair enough, We'll do more about this because I go to you because you've been around for a very long time also, and I love these discussions, Steve.
Thank you. Saturday night. That'll a good weekend, all right, you two. And then on Sunday it's Studio sixty six forty.
This is KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
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