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And now Handle on the news.
Ladies and gentlemen, here's not Bill Handle, anybody, friends.
The long National Nightmare is nearly over. Neil Savedra returns next week to take over hosting duties and then I ski daddle Chris Merrill in for Bill one last time this morning. It is as always an honor. I just absolutely adore this this crew. I mean, you guys are fantastic producer and is amazing. Kno is one of the best at his job. And who doesn't love hearing Amy King's voice every morning when they wake up? Just just a wild brane to be a part of this.
We're gonna miss Okay, you can come back.
You're very thank you. That's all I was looking for. Really, just wanted to return, invite. That's it. So, guys, thanks so much for letting me play here this last week and a half or whatever. It's been a blast. But I am ready for a vacation myself, so I'm gonna I'm gonna take that and indulge just a little bit in some free time, which I don't know about you, but free time for me. Means I've got a whole
list of chores I have to catch up on. So there's gonna be a lot of yard work, little home repair, that kind of stuff this next week. Whatever's on the honeydew list, this is my chance to knock it out. So good stuff. Somebody who's probably looking for a vacation right about now is Pete Hegsiff, but he's not going to get one. That is the Secretary of Defense. A federal judge is now ordering that White House officials that were involved in that signal app group chat on the
military strikes and Yemen, they're supposed to preserve their messages. Now. The US District Court Judge James Boseburg, seems like we've heard that name before, has now ordered members of President Donald Trump's National security team to hang out to those messages. We're gonna want to see those.
Get a signed to this to this again. Is it supposed to be a random pick of judges?
It is, Yeah, which I think kind of goes to show just how many cases are flying through the district courts in DC right now.
So you think it was a random.
Choice, I do, Yeah, I do that he just.
Happened to get two Trump cases back to back.
Yeah, and here, let me make this point in the same way that Aileen Cannon ended up on two Trump cases back to back in Florida, that district court judge, right that, I.
Don't think that was random.
Oh I love this. Oh, go on with your conspiracies.
Girl, Friday Morning conspiracy.
All right. So during the during the Biden administration, Trump got the judge of choice, but during the Trump administration he's not getting of the judges.
It's fixed on both sides, but.
It seems to be always fixed against whoever's in the White House. How does that happen?
Well, it's fixed. I'm just joging, I'm just king.
Yeah. So, anyway, there was a lawsuit that was filed by American Oversight. They alleged the officials use of the signal app violated federal records laws. A little bit later on today, in fact, I think we may even have some of this in the handle on the news and that is that you know Mayor Bass's text messages during the LA fires. She was like, Oh, my phone just deleted those. How does that happen? This technology? This is so wild. How was I even supposed to figure this out?
And she's been told no, no, you got to hang onto those things for a couple of years. You can't go, you can't go deleting them. And then lo and behold, we're able to recover her messages. The signal app does delete messages after a certain period of time, and so what the judge is saying is, Nope, if you've got to do screenshots or whatever you have to do, you
preserve those messages. Well, fortunately for the Department of Defense, the National Security Advisors, for everybody else that's involved, the Vice pro is it, the Secretary of State, the Atlantic has gone ahead and screenshot at all of those things. So it shouldn't be too tough to preserve those messages because well they gave journalists and access to it. Well you got that going forward.
You got to know that again that the guy Goldberg who got him. Of course he's going to make a copy of them to preserve for eternity immediately in case something happens.
So I happened to see in some of the trades there was reaction. As you know, talk radio is about ninety five percent right wing talk, and one of the questions was, what would happen if you were added to that text, and some of them said, well, I'd like to think that I would notify everybody in the chat
that I shouldn't be there. But Amy, if that were you from a journalist stamp, because you're the closest thing to a journalist we have from a journalist standpoint, Lord knows it ain't me, would you notify, hey, everybody, I'm not supposed to be in here, Or as a journalist, would you start screenshotting and start saving things for posterity, for for potential legal challenges, for anything, to cover your own butt.
It's interesting that you ask, because we were just talking about this last night and we were talking about how as journalists and when you have relationships with different people, you know, sometimes you get information that you're not supposed to share and they say, well, we'll tell you, but you can't.
You can't let this out.
And you know, I the record or embarga off the.
Record, embargoed whatever, and I have. I've had some really great secrets. So that's why when people say can you keep a secret, I'm like, yeah, I have a lot. So I don't know, though, how you necessarily handle that if you get invited in I would again I would like to think that I would reach out to whoever started and go, hey, guys, I don't I don't think I'm supposed to be in here.
Not me.
You'd keep it, Oh, I would keep it.
I'd be like, this is going to be the greatest story ever. I am on the verge of disclosing the greatest screw up in decades. This is wonderful. But to his credit, this this Jeffrey Goldberg from the Atlantic, he didn't out them while operations were going on. I mean if he had said, if he had published something while the attacks were being planned, that would have that would have put troops in danger, wouldn't it. That would have put pilots.
In So there was some restraint there. That was good.
Yeah, that's uh.
That would have been then a threat to national security.
And you know my prediction about somebody is going to lose their job over this, and I said, oh, somebody's gonna lose their job. And then I said, oh, you know what. The next day, Trump came out and said, no, everybody's great, we all learned our lessons. And I said, oh, I might not. I'm kind of edging up back toward the somebody might lose their job on this who I don't know. There's a lot of behind the scenes, is
what I'm hearing about. Hegsith right now that he's he's screwed a few things up, But I still think I still think Mike Wilt that National Security advisor.
Because he's the one who started the chat or his office.
Invited him that. I mean, he's the one that screwed things up. I had this. It's funny you were I don't know who you were talking to last night as you were debating the the the media ethics of the whole situation, I was debating the reality TV of the whole situation. If this were the apprentice, who would Trump fire? If they all had to gather in that boardroom and
somebody had to be dismissed, who would Trump fire? Would he get rid of Hegsith for, you know, disclosing the information using his personal cell phone, which is something of course, it was railed against when it came to Hillary Clinton. Would he would he bag Hegxith? Or would he say But this ultimately comes down to you, Waltz. You're the
guy that started this whole thing. If it hadn't been for you, then nobody else would have been would have been wrapped up in this, and for that reason, you're fired. Who would he have fired on his show? That's what I was debating in my head. And then then I had a drink and I watched White Lotus, So that was my night. Yep, all right to you?
Uh, ap is Oh wait, nope, I'm going back. Uh.
This this one was felt all the way into China.
A big old earthquake hit in me and mar happened around midday local time. It collapsed buildings hundreds of miles away in Thailand.
Away in Thailand.
Uh.
They are saying that rural villages.
Are super affected everywhere from you know, like just small towns to glitzy high rises. And there's video of it and it says when the shaking started, you could see the building swaying. Traffic came to a stop, and they said it was felt as far away as China.
Wow, A seven seven.
Seven seven, that's that's what with the Northwich north Ridge was seven two seven one.
I wasn't here in that, Yeah, yeah, I mean wow, yeah, and so far they really felt this so far away.
Yeah. They're saying that they have confirmed three people have been killed, nineties are missing, and they're saying that there's from the building collapses, there's people trapped in debris and stuff.
Oh no, oh yeah. When you hear those initial reports and they say three people are lost, and you go, well that number is gonna grow. Oh man, that is horrible. And uh do you know I worked for the guy in San Diego and he used to swear he could feel everything. There'd be there would be a tremor in Indio and he'd come into working on I felt it. I felt that one. So you know, there's somebody that's uh it's in Tokyo. That was like I think I felt that too, you know, I think I felt it.
Somebody is saying that that is wild seven to seven. And then, like you said, Myanmar and into Bangkok too, right, they were feeling it and they had damn it was it damage in Bangkok as well.
Yeah, wow, yeah, and it's this is all. It happened midday local time, so we're still we're getting information and it started as always, it's a little slow to come in when big things like this happen.
Well, remember too, you've got to you've got a very you have pockets there as you mentioned you've got some glitzy high rises, but you've got pockets of some very poor villages and so people that have been devastated by
some of the bloody battles that have gone on. The economy is trash and they are literally just trying to survive, and then they get hit with this earthquake, which you know, God hates them, I guess is the only the only conclusion we can come up with President Donald Trump saying the United States is gonna go as far as we have to. We're gonna go as far as we have to go to get control of Greenland. If you'll recall Vice President J. D. Vance is headed there today. Uh
he second Lady Usha Vance. I keep saying her name wrong too, So my hologies on that. And Energy Secretary Chris Wright is going to leave the United States delegation lead excuse me, the delegation to visit the military base in oh Is that a swear word pit to fit? I don't speak Greenlandese, and I'm afraid of that. That's a curse word in English. Anyway, they are scaling back their plants for the broader and longer visit, mostly because Greenland said, we don't want you here. They were going
to go to the capital and they will not. They were going to visit the Greenland and capital and then also take in a dog sled race, because that's what you do in Greenland. Trump showing no indication of softening is ambition to take control of the island, which of course is a territory of Denmark. Trump saying we need Greenland for national security and international security. This flies in the face of the non interventionalist, more isolationist pitch that
we got during the campaign. We're going to not be involved in other people's wars. We are not going to be sending our military abroad. But instead we're saying we are sending our military abroad to pick fights. So how much when he says we'll go as far as we have to go, are we dispatching our own military to Greenland beyond, of course the military that's already stationed there. Trump says, I view it from a security standpoint, we have to be there. Well, we are there, we do
have a base there. But do we need to take their rare earth minerals. That's the question that we're all facing right now. That's the question that the administration is considering, and that's the question that we want answered as observers of how our politicians behave Amy King.
AP says it's locked out. A veteran AP photographer and White House correspondent testified yesterday that AP has struggled to compete in its average of the Trump presidency since the White House's decision to limit its access to presidential events, the Oval Office and Air Force One. She said they're really struggling to keep up with its competitors, particularly during major news events that have happened during the opening weeks of President Trump's second term.
Yeah, what's the endgame on this one? Is it to bolster media that is friendly to the president. I mean that's on the surfaces what people say AP was mean to him. AP won't call it the Gulf of America. So AP is going to pay the price. And AP
is saying we can't keep up with our competitors. On the other hand, if you were some of the competitors, you may have been saying, we can't possibly get a foot in the door because AP is taking all of the They're taking up all the seats, right, always the reporters, right, they always get a seat, right, And so you have others that have said, well, that's that's an unfair disadvantage
to us, because AP is all granted this seat. And now the AP is saying, well, this is unfair to us because we can't have the access that we've always had. So we may just be seeing a shift in the This might be the new world news order that we're witnessing. The difference, though, is that the AP is an aggregate news organization. It is not isolated too. It's not CNN, it's not News Nation, it's not Fox, it's not One America or whatever else.
It is.
A conglomerate of journalists who then distribute out to all the other agencies. So CNN, Fox, News Nation, all these others can still pull AP coverage provided they pay the AP dues, which are not cheap. Incidentally, it was a fight I used to have as a manager at a station I was at for years. He said, do we really need the AP? And I said, well, you don't have a news department, so yeah, we do need the AP.
If we want to have any news product on our news station, we're going to need to have access to AP. But and now AP doesn't have access to the White House, so how much value do they have to these places that are paying those high fees to get their products. Ever since news broke about the Trump officials discussing US military attack plans in a group chat that inadvertently included a journalist, Defense Secretary Pete Hexith, projecting unflinching confidence, he
said on Tuesday, I know exactly what I'm doing, do you? Though? Because other Defense officials later in the week were increasingly skeptical, especially after The Atlantic magazine then printed some of the signal chat about the pending strike on the Hooti rebels and Yemen. According to one Defense official talking with CNN, it's safe to say that anybody in uniform would be court martialed for this. My most junior analysts know not
to do this. So some say Hexith looks particularly bad given the level of detail that he shared in the chat. So Hesith didn't realize that the chat was being shared with the journalist, and he was just spilling all the tea. You know, hey, we're leaving at this time, the bombs
will drop here at this time. It was very specific and he was discussing it in detail, even though he wasn't the guy that invited the journalist in there are questions about his ability to do the job, mostly because he was just given all the details in this signal app. I gotta believe, and he was using his phone too. I gotta believe. We've already seen the Chinese hacking into, or at least attempting to hack into the private phones of different elected officials. I gotta believe they are doubling
down on that effort. And I also have to believe that Russia, who was sharing information with some of these other groups, is happy to be able to try to hack into somebody else's phone to watch what they're doing. And all it takes is just to congratulations, you've won a new car click here, and then somebody clicks on it and go, that's weird. I didn't even know I was looking for a new car, and then they click on it and suddenly they've opened their phone up to
Russian hackers. So a lot of concerns about this, the same concerns that people had about Hillary Clinton using her BlackBerry back in the day. What I find to be the most interesting on this signal chat breach is the hypocrisy that is raining down from both sides. We have people on the left that when Hillary Clinton had her BlackBerry, they said, lots of officials use their phones. Colin Powell us his phone, Hillary Clinton use. They're very safe phones
with there's nothing to worry about. I know you've got that photo of Hillary Clinton on Air Force one using her BlackBerry, but that's totally fine. You guys are blowing this way out of proportion. And the Republicans at the time said Hillary Clinton has jeopardized the lives of American soldiers. Hillary clinton wanton disregard for security measures is putting American lives of our heroes at risk. And Hillary Clinton should be court martialed and hanged in the public square. Lock
her up, lock her up, lock her up. And now it's completely flipped. So now you've got Democrats that want to for although I haven't heard anybody saying that people need to be criminally charged. There was a question that was posed by media to Pam Bondi, the Attorney generalist, said will there be a criminal investigation and she said nah, So evidently we're not going to lock him up at all. There will be none of that. But will there be
political fallout? Will hegsif lose his job? Will this National Security advisor that invited the journalist onto the signal app chat Mike Waltz lose his job. That remains to be seen, but safe to say the confidence in the competency of some of these officials is coming into question. Amy King to you.
Elise is in limbo.
The White House has pulled Representative Elas Stephonics nomination to become the next US ambassador to the United Nations. President Trump said he was going to withdraw the nomination because they've got such a narrow majority in the House he needs to do everything he can to preserve that so he can push forward his agenda and get his stuff passed. He also said he didn't want to take a chance on Stephanic's open seat in northern New York, that it
might go to the Democrats. It is heavily favored for the Republicans now. Stephanic, since she was named as the UN ambassador or the nominee to be, had to give up her leadership post, so she's sort of in limbo right now. She's still a congresswoman, but lost her power.
Position, but she still got the job.
She doesn't.
Both Trump and Johnson say they're going to find something for her because she was like three in the house.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, She's gonna be fine. One of the things about this administration is that they tend to say the quiet part out loud. I love that. I mean, at least there's a certain and it's it's funny to say from a president who will still argue about crowd sizes. It is. It is funny to hear just how blatantly honest they are about some of their tactics.
It's not you know, at least Stephonic is just she's too important to the operations in the House and and you know, we've got some other people with the un and we're so thankful that she was willing to put things aside for the good of her country. Instead they go at least Stephonic, we need her vote. So basically, she's gonna lose this better job because we really need her vote and we don't want to take the chance of losing all the crap we're trying to put through
the House. So I'm gonna find somebody else to do the job, probably a relative. But Stephanic is going to go back to the house and just be a house mom. That's your thing. She can be a house mom from here on out. And I so appreciate the honesty.
You know what, when you do your Donald Trump, you sound like Alec Baldwin's Donald Trump.
See. I just think it's horrible.
I think it's fine.
It's one of those brutally bad impersonations, so terrible. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says at least three hundred foreign students I've had their visas revoked amid the Trump administration's immigration crackdown. He said maybe more. He might be more than three hundred at this point. So he says, we do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa, and I hope at some point we run out because we have gotten rid of all of them. But we're looking every day
for these lunatics that are tearing things up. The administration officials are looking to block some colleges that have too many quote unquote pro Hamas foreign students from admitting any international individuals. So high profile cases come out of Columbia, Tufts and the University of Alabama. Trump Administration's cracked down on the pro Palestinian foreign students, escalating let's juxtapose this
to another story that we had. I can't remember amy if it was yesterday or the day before, but there were Palestinian protests in Gaza against Hamas. Right, So you had Palestinians that were protesting Hamas. That sort of flies in the face of the narrative that we've heard that if you are Palestinian in Gaza, you are Hamas. Right, there's well, I don't think.
I don't think we've said all Palestinians are Hamas.
You and I haven't. But the narrative that we've heard from others is that that the Palestinians are Hamas. And I've had this argument. I go, are you telling me that the women and children who are dying in Gaza are supporters of Hamas? And I hear, well, they voted a man and they don't. They've never gotten rid of Hamas. And I said, well, it's because they voted a man and then Hamas turned into a terrorist organization and they took over and didn't allow for democratic voting any longer. Well,
they shouldn't have done that, That's what I hear. These are not well educated people I talk to a lot. I really need to change my circle of friends, come to think of it, But it does fly in the face of that narrative that you do, in fact, have people in Gaza who are Palestinian that are saying, we don't want this war and terror crap. So can you? And this is the argument that we're going to have
when it comes to these universities. Can you have someone that is pro Palestinian that doesn't like seeing the fighting continuing in Gaza that is not pro Hamas as the administration is pointing it out? In other words, are all of the protesters at the universities that we saw last year, are they all quote unquote pro Hamas? I don't believe that they are. I do believe a lot of those protests did get out of hand, and I don't think that they should have gotten out of hand, and that
disgusted me as well. But it's a whole lot different than saying somebody is pro terrorist when they are just bad at protesting.
To you, speaking of bad, they got a really bad one.
The alleged leader of an MS thirteen street gang on the East Coast has been arrested in Virginia. Twenty four year old is from l Salvador, described as one of MS's thirteen's top leaders in the US and he's just twenty.
Four and it's part of the called ambitious I guess they were.
They're talking about it that saying he was recruited as like when he was in eighth grade or something.
Crazy.
Wow, but that's impressive.
They rated wherever he was living and have taken him into custody.
Now, is he a foreign national Salvador from L Salvador? Okay?
Yeah, yeah here illegally Okay?
So does he I honestly don't know the answer to this question. Does he have to do time. Let's say he's found guilty of the MS thirteeniness of it all? Does he do time in the United States and then get deported or do we just deport him to that L. Salvador in prison where we're sending the trace Deagua's trendy trent trede.
Diagua trenday Aragua. Yeah, I can't be TDA, that's what everybody's calling it.
There you go the CBA. Yeah, I don't.
Know, because like Shoeo Tani's interpreter, different kind of crime, right, But he was sentenced to almost five years. He's expected to serve out his sentence here and then they're saying they expect to It hasn't been you know, we don't know for sure, but they're saying they expect that he'll be deported after he serves a sentence.
But he also had a visa to be here to start with, right where it's this guy, this MS thirteen guy did not have a visa. He was here illegally. Huh. I'd rather do my time at a US federal prison, wouldn't you than that El Salvadorian hole that they're sticking people in.
That doesn't sound like a great place to be.
No, it does not sound like a lot of fun to me. I'm going to guess that the the commissary is not as well stocked either. Uh, bad way to go. When we were kids, we would hear stories about quicksand right, you'd hear then you'd hear stories about spontaneous combustion. And none of those things have ever affected me. Right, A lot of things I learned as a kid that I don't use as an adult. I don't really have to know how to get out of quicksand I don't really
have to worry about spontaneous combustion. I don't really have to know anything about trigonometry. What about rabies. I watched Old Yeller Rabies scared the heck out of me, and my mother used to tell me, if you get rabies, they have to give you a shot in your stomach and the needle is eighteen inches long. That's what my mother would tell me. Now, a Michigan resident has died
of rabies. Wasn't bit by a dog or a bat or anything else, had an organ transplant, Michigan Department of Health and Human Services telling ABC News the patient underwent an organ transplant in Ohio. Ohio hospitals are notorious for passing rabies to everyone. I added that part the resident go buying in a public health investigation determined that they contracted rabies through the transplanted organ. The organ donor was not from Michigan or Ohio, so don't get your organs
from other states. I guess. They said that there are no current threats to the general public, and that anyone exposed to the Michigan patient, including health care providers, has been assessed for possible exposure to rabies h and they were given post exposure preventative care as well. By the way, I don't think you have to take a giant shot to the belly if you get rabies any longer you don't. No, I think they've changed that. I think that the rabies treatment is not nearly as gross.
But if you don't get treated, it'll still kill you.
Oh yeah, you get foamed at the mouth and then somebody has to take you out back and shoot you. That's the way it works, Just like they say, person to person transmission RABI is extremely rare, though it has been documented in a very small number of cases involving organ transplantation.
This isn't the first time that's happened.
No, wouldn't you think that they would have a test to make sure. They have to test those organs for stuff, right, you'd think that they would. Part of that test would be does this liver have rabies? I guess not. Also, it makes you wonder what the donor died of. How peculiar that you have a donor that had rabies but then didn't die of rabies, and then their organ was taken. Can you imagine that, Oh, I got bit by a dog.
I haven't been testing. Maybe they were on their way to the hospital to be tested for rabies when they got into a car accident. See, we don't know this. These are details that don't come out because you have to. You have to, you know, protect the privacy of the donor, and yet it leaves us terrified. Terrified. KFIAM six forty We're live everywhere in the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening
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