You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from kf I Am six forty and now Handle on the news. Ladies and gentlemen, here's not Bill Handle.
Hi, it's Chris merriland for Bill once again, what are we is? It? Just? Is it just Tuesday?
This has been the longest the longest, I mean yesterday was like the longest month I've ever experienced. So it was really something good to be with you once again.
Congratulations.
Let me start this out, so if you if you tune in on Sunday afternoons and evenings, that's.
That's normally when you hear me.
We follow oftentimes other guest hosts who are on Sunday afternoons, and many times what we'll do is we'll invite somebody in from one of the TV stations that we'll come and host a couple of hours, and it's exciting for them. They're very pretty people, so you know, we really get a chance to highlight their intellect and instead of just everybody that stares at the TV news and they just
oggle over the pretty people. One of the things that goes on behind the scenes, though, is one of our anchors, Andrew Caravella, is incredibly talented, but he is such a selfie hog. Anytime one of these TV people comes in, Caravella follows them around.
Can I get at a selfie? Can I get a picture? Can I get it?
He must have one of those shrines in his in his office or whatever. That is just him with pictures of random people. Nobody gets more attention, whether it's from anchor Andrew Carabella, or the the tech directors or even my producer who just vanishes whenever Marla Teez comes in from Fox. And she's been at a few times, and Marla is a lovely person and she does a great
job when she's in. She just had a baby, and so we want to start by saying congratulations to Marlata as she just she gave birth and so that is great.
She is amy.
Do we count her as part of the KFI family? Absolutely, she's KFI extended family.
Yep, Okay, all right, KFI extended family.
Welcoming and yes, Marlateez and she's got she got her hands full now, which means that now Andrew Caravella has to go get another selfie with her kid. I guess which is gonna be awkward. But he doesn't care. He just follows her around.
Hey, Marla, gotta get selfie.
And the thing is, it's not just one selfies. Every time they come in, he gets another one. Don't you think one would be enough? Is he creating like a flip book of selfies? It's the weirdest thing. He's so bizarre. All right, let's do a handle on the news, Chris Merrill in four handle today. And you heard Amy talking about this this morning during the wake up call. A lot of attention on Hillary Clinton's emails and the private serp.
That's incorrect, that story's old.
All right, Well, nobody else is using unsecured, non governmental equipment in order to pass confidential messages.
Around, So I guess we can move on.
Oh, Amy tells me we are, We are using unsecured Oh well, why are we doing that? I thought we learned our lesson from Hillary Clinton and her private email server. Then then we go through this already, we already know you're not supposed to use anything except government secured.
We didn't.
And don't you find it very strange that they're talking about war plans or launching strikes or you know, the specific zhivicy on a text message? Yeah, that just is so bizarre and apparently Karen Travers was telling us this text string went on for days.
Yeah, which is like, hey guys, you hanging this weekend? Who's in We're gonna start, We're going to meet it to.
Sizzler and then we're gonna make our way to what's the next thing good, Then we'll go to the game and then maybe pizza Hut after.
I don't know whatever it is. So here's what was going on.
Is it sounds like you had a number of high end officials who were planning this attack in Yemen and this was going to be on the hooty Rebels, right. They were using the Signal messaging app. Now, Signal messaging app is a little more secure than say Reddit. Signal has end to end encryption, which does make it more difficult to breach, but it is certainly not classified and it's.
Not what they call this skiff, you know. The skiff is the high.
End the secured classified information chambers that they set up. And so they were using this messaging app and it sounds like we had the Secretary of Defense, we had the Vice president, we had the National Security Advisor, and then the National Security Advisor seems to inadvertently added the phone number of a journalist. There are a lot of questions swirling, like, how do you inadvertently add a journalist?
You have to have their phone number.
Did the journalists just happen to share the same name or contact information, or was his phone number one digit off of somebody else's it. The whole story is incredibly bizarre. We'll talk more about this coming up at seven o'clock. But the whole thing is bizarre because now we're using this messaging app, reporter's been added. Reporter thought it was a hoax because the reporter, to Amy's point, how odd that they would use a messaging app to discuss war plans.
And he thought, this can't be real. Somebody's trying to somebody's fishing here, somebody's trying to catch me.
I no, he says.
And then all of a sudden, they did start attacking the houthy militants in Yemen. So and they did so according to all of the different plans that were laid out during this messaging app. Now, Pete Hegseith, the Secretary of Defenses, we were not laying out any sort of war plans. But also this journalist is stupid. You got to understand journalists is dumb and nobody should believe the journalists.
And their their their dumbness.
The problem is the journalists brought receipts, as the kids would say, and so with the journalists providing screenshots of exactly went down, makes it very difficult to discredit the journalist. Again, receipts are there. So this story is developing. No word on whether or not Hillary Clinton's emails have ever been found to be incorrect. What will be interesting, though the Democrats are attacking this, is an unforced there by the Republicans.
The Democrats are attacking this, but it's going to be very difficult for the Democrats to attack it because they spent so long defending Hillary Clinton's private server usage. So the only attack that they have is not necessarily that they use the unsecured chat although again end to end encryption. What they're going to argue is that the Republicans are hypocrites, and I don't think the Republicans care. This isn't going
to cost any votes. It just is going to raise some eyebrows along the way, Amy King, do you live?
Nation has settled because no one wants to go to court. Right Live Nation has agreed to a twenty million dollars settlement with its investors over the claims that the company did not disclose risks of business practices that exposed the firm to federal antitrust action. What kinds of business practices, Well, things like charging high fees, bundling service, retaliating against venues that used non Ticketmaster ticketing services. The lawsuit had claimed.
The legal risks included a Justice Department investigation after Taylor Swift Ara's tour on sale. Remember that whole Debaco where it crashed the system and people couldn't get tickets and all of that. Yeah, so they said their business practices exposed those investors to legal risks and they settled.
Oh so they got rid of that. Doesn't this feel like? This feels like we were arguing over ticket Master and.
Their business practices when Pearl Jam was complaining about them back in the nineties. Thank god, what's old is new again? I guess if you'll recall a few years back, we got.
A new.
Head of the postal service, Lewis de Joy, and he came in and he started streamlining. He said, I'm going to start cutting things and you may remember the photographs of pulling some of the old equipment out and that was being pushed out and disabled, and people were concerned about will votes be counted?
Is this a way to delay the count on some of these votes?
This is back in twenty sixteen, I think anyway, Now Lewis de Joy is resigning as the head of the Postal Service. So now the Postal Service, we don't know what the future is going to be because there are calls.
For privatizing the US Postal Service.
The Trump administration is scrutinizing Uspsdjoy said that while the two hundred and fifty year old service had made beneficial change to what had been in a drift in morb an organization, there's still more work to be done.
He says.
It's been one of the pleasures of my life and a crowning achievement of my career to have been associated with his cherished institution.
So oh I.
Said twenty sixteen, No, it was a twenty twenty sod Joia was appointed Postmaster General during the pandemic. He announced plans actually that he was going to resign or that he was going to retire.
Now he's just done it.
And we'll see what happens, because there's been conversation about turning the postal service over to another government agency in order to once again streamline what's going on.
And it's time to make a plan for summer. Yosemite National Park has announced reservations are open for summer camping. I haven't camped there in so long. It's so beautiful. New reservation system and staff cuts caused delays in opening up the reservation system back in February. The reservations were put on hold because they had to get approval for to implement a new implement a new reservation system, and
then came the cuts, the DOGE cuts. But now they're saying those people have been hired back and they're good to go, and the reservation systems approved and they're gonna take the reservations starting now.
If you got doged and then they called you and they said, oops, we weren't supposed to doge, you would you go back?
If I worked in a national park, probably probably a cool.
Nues that's true. Yeah, you make a good point, you make it. I guess it depends on the job. But if I'm just if I'm somebody working in an office job for the government. I'm immediately trying to get my resume out so somebody else will hire me, because I don't want to deal with that that insecurity of wondering if my job is going to be there tomorrow. We doesn't have any idea to Venezuela. We have spoken more about Venezuela in the last three weeks and I think
we ever have in the past. Donald Trump saying yesterday that he is going to impose a twenty five percent tariff on any nation that purchases oil from Venezuela, saying, Venezuela has been very hostile to the United States and the freedoms which we espouse. Therefore, any country that purchases oil and or gas from Venezuela will be forced to pay a tariff of twenty five percent to the United
States on any trade they do with our country. So he's claimed that Venezuela has purposefully and deceitfully sent criminals, including violent individuals and members of gangs to the United States. My favorite is when he says that they are sending people from insane asylums. I don't think anyone has used the phrase insane asylums since the nineteen seventies. But by god, we hear they're sending people from insane asylums, and that
just makes me giggle every time I hear it. So Venezuela is attacking us by sending gang members, and so we are going to impose tariffs, which of course will raise prices on everything for the Americans, and that'll show.
Back to you. I got nothing else.
Not so warm welcome. Denmark's prime minister had some not so welcoming words at information that Trump's administration is sending a delegation to Greenland this week. She says it's putting unacceptable pressure on Greenland. Trump of course has his site set on seizing Greenland and using it as reserves of critical minerals, and of course strategically it's a pretty strong
location in the Arctic. The prime minister said that, or said that Greenlandic representatives were clear they do not want a visit now, and added, we don't even have a government because they just had elections. Oh yeah, but anyway, Usha Advance is leading the delegation that's head in there on Thursday.
So what is she going to do? Is she going to plant the flag and claim it for America?
I don't know. I Mike Wallas is going too, but yeah, I was kind of curious why she's going.
We will check with the Atlantic and see if they got any text messages about what the plans are.
Can you give us an update on the Greenland visit?
Yeah, we may have. We may be sharing that information too. Yeah.
I don't know how this is. I don't know how this plays out, that we somehow end up with Greenland. This feels like a massive distraction. I understand the strategic value of it in the Arctic Circle. We have a very very small piece of the Arctic Circle in northern Alaska. That's the only claim to the area that we have. So with Trump talking about Canada and Greenland, it's like he's trying to take a great deal of that Arctic Circle.
I just don't think either Greenland or Canada are suddenly going to say.
Oh, you know what, we win the wave of this invitation. Yeah, I just don't see it.
Well, I didn't know this.
We do.
We have a military base on Greenland. We used to have like more was it twenty or thirty We were talking to our White House correspondent on Decker there was like twenty or thirty bases on Greenland at some point. Now we don't have those, well, exactly, we've got the one.
Well could we reopen those? Is that?
Is that an issue? I just wonder what the endgame is. One thing about Trump is what we know how the deal works, right, and that is that you say I want this, I want so much, and if you don't give it to me, there's going to be hell to pay. And then they negotiate down to something else and they go, Okay, well you're obviously not going to get all of that, but we will let you reopen ten bases or something like that.
Right, So, I mean, maybe that's the end goal. I don't have any idea. I just don't.
I don't know what the I don't know what the negotiating goal is when he talks about these things. Meanwhile, Greater Los Angeles a rental market facing increased competition. According to new research from rent Cafe, the wildfire is adding uncertainty to the rental market outlook. Don't know exactly how
that's going to play out as well. The data shows both eastern and western Los Angeles County have become more challenging for renters compared to early twenty twenty four Eastern La County, which includes parts of La Long Beach, Pasadena, Pomona, and Downy, more than half the renters are renewing their leases. That's up from just shy of half a year ago. Rerant Cafe reporting that that suggests that renters are prioritizing stability.
They're not moving around.
In fact, they're hanging out of their place because they don't want to have to try to find someplace else. Apartment supply has gone up slightly from last year, which is good occupancy rate ninety six percent, So if you're looking for a place, your selections are not.
Huge.
Apartments vacant for an average of just about six weeks. They say competition is intense and they are only about there are about thirteen perspective renters available per unit. Wow, yeah, which means you are fighting with everybody else if you want to get in. And you wonder why rent is so high, it's because they can charge whatever they want. They've got thirteen people trying to get an abyate every rental.
Yeah, and an extra what ten thousand people who need a place to stay thanks to the ryers.
Right, So now what do you do?
This is why so many people that have a place aren't They're not jumping ship, they're just signing renewals. I don't know. I really don't know. If you're looking for a place, I don't know what you do. What a tough situation to be in. And even if you can find a place, can you afford it? And if you are, if you're a homeowner. In fact, Anne and I were talking about this yesterday, it feels like if you're a homeowner in southern California, I mean anywhere in southern California here,
Orange County, La County, San Bernardino, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura. Always, if you are a homeowner, you are in one of two camps. You either have owned your home for a while and you are house rich, meaning you have a lot of equity. You might not have a whole lot in your bank account, but you have a lot of
equity in your house. And so your house rich or your house poor, which means and you could potentially be both, because if your house poor means are you are dedicating a significant amount, far more than recommended of your salary your earnings to paying for your mortgage. And so if that's the case, it's possible you have a bunch of equity in your home and you're also paying a ton on your home. You may still be house poor, paying say forty to fifty percent of your salary to your mortgage,
but have a bunch of equity in your home. The good news is if something were to change in your life, you could always sell your house and then take that equity and move someplace cheaper like Cheyenne, because who doesn't want to be in Cheyenne.
It's a nice place to be.
Is it sunny in eighty in Cheyenne in market right now?
No? No, it is not.
Nope, it's not. But you can afford it. So you just describe the sunshine tax I think, Amy King, would you accept diamonds that have been processed?
Uh? I don't know. Here's what happened after and nearly a month, hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of diamond ear rings have now been recovered from a man accused of stealing them. So Jason Gilder or Jaython Gilder, I'll get to that from Houston, Texas was arrested on February twenty sixth after allegedly robbing a Tiffany and Company store in Orlando. During his arrest, Gilder was seen swallowing a
few items. Well, that was February twenty sixth, and on March tenth, detectives recovered three of the four Tiffany and Company diamond ear rings, and then the fourth ear ring was recovered on March twelfth.
Oh, so they must have done surgery.
Then Nope, they just waited for nature to take its course. And then they they took the ear rings and went back and cleaned them. And I don't know are they going to try to sell them. Maybe there's a discount.
I would think there's got to be a discount on that. Do you suppose that he also swallowed the blue box?
No?
Or just the earrings? The just the earringstulf.
Athough you remember, you know, I mean if they're if they depends if they were clip ons or if they were pierced ear rings. You know, they have the studs. You think that could get caught up somewhere along.
Oh yeah, oh that'll that'll shred your your innards. You don't want to swallow those. It's like it's like trying to pass nails.
Here's the more interesting part there were four freeze.
What is more interesting than that.
Four diamond ear rings? Yeah, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. I just think that the value on those hundreds of thousands.
You make a really great point.
I still don't think I want to them.
I think you have to sell them at a discounted rate at this point, don't you buy? Do they go on a little clearance shelf at Tiffany's, Like when you walk in the store it says fifty percent off. I think I would buy those from my wife. I just wouldn't tell her. If somebody brought you a little blue box with Tiffany's diamond earrings in it that were all shiny when you open the box, it's not like you're gonna smell them, so you would go, oh my gosh, you
got me Tiffany's. These They are beautiful. I love you so much, and you just you don't tell her. You don't share that they were.
Processed, and it's not like you're going to ask, honey, these are beautiful, but did somebody swallow them and then they had to poop them out to run back?
That's it doesn't come up in conversation.
So I think you're safe.
Yeah, absolutely all right right.
In fact, my wife's engagement ring, which he still wears, was recovered during a kulidoscopy. So I got a good deal on that. I got that from poo Nile get it. No, getting a lot, no, no, un noted airlines flying from Los Angeles to China had to turn around.
Whoops.
One of the pilots took off, but he forgot something his passport that's frowned upon. So the flight took off from lax at two o'clock Saturday, two hundred and fifty seven passengers on board, thirteen crew members getting ready to settle in for that long flight bound for Shanghai. Two hours later, the pilot says, cower.
This year is flight one.
They're gonna make a return to the runway. It seems I forgot my wallet. So they turned around headed back to San Francisco. They landed at five pm in San Francisco. Evidently the pilot had their passport at San Francisco, so then they had to have a new crew take the customers to their destination later in the evening. So I guess the thirteen crew members that thought they were getting paid to go to Shanghai they got a quick flight and a quick turnaround. Surprise, you've been out a flight
that's been diverted, and never have. I had to do some flying last week, and I was freaked out because the uh, there's been a rash of collisions or near collisions of late and to be honest, I was a little nervous. We were taking off and I kept staring out the window, going, I hope assessant doesn't pull in front of us, because that's what we've seen that happen here in the last You know, this year has been not a great year for flight safety.
On the chopping block at TikTok is this so called chubby ai filter. So wait, you put a photo on there and then it slowly shows you getting chubbier while the song anxiety plays by DOCI. The videos sparking backlash with people are concerned about sending out body shaming messages like this. One guy said, yeah, imagine you're sitting there and you start seeing people getting fatter and then go, oh, now that looks like I already look. So they talked
about body shaming. TikTok says it took the filter down, but some users say they can still find it. It just now has a disclaimer. Uh huh that says you are more than your weight.
Uh huh.
Well, thank goodness, we're using the most technological advanced, the greatest technological advancement in the last thirty years for doing important work Like what would I look like if I were fifty pounds heavier?
I would take that app and I would use a shrinker.
That's what I'm wondering. But isn't that body shaming?
Isn't that saying well, you're happy with you should be happy with how you look now you shouldn't be imagining.
That's shaming you for not being happy about what you look like.
Now, Oh my gosh, Can I just be happy? Is there a happy app? Can I have an AI filter that makes it? This is what it would look like if you didn't have other people telling you what you should think.
Look, you're smiling, Thank god.
This is why, once again, TikTok is ground zero for the declination of civil society. It all starts with TikTok. I'm telling you that thing needs to be.
What happened to the band? I thought we were getting rid of TikTok, We're unbanning TikTok. That's what we need. We need to get rid of the we need to get rid of we need. That's it. That's all I got. Uh, what's happening here? Oh yeah, here we go.
In the hours and the days after the fires sparked in January, people were smelling and breathing some of the smoke. Obviously, now come to find out you were breathing in some really gross stuff. Toxins in that smoke is I've been found in the blood of firefighters. Collecting blood samples from twenty northern California firefighters who came down California, Southern California excuse me, to help battle the Eaton and Palisades fires.
Blood samples collected, and what do they find in the blood samples?
Lood five times.
Greater than normal, mercury levels three times greater than normal. So you're basically breathing in toxic metals.
So that's fun.
How long do you think we're going to continue to have reports coming out after these fires, you know, discovering more and more of the horrible.
Stuff that was going on. I think you're exactly right.
Just like after other major tragedy, we find out about burn pits in the middle East. We're still hearing about some of the firefighter from nine to eleven are still dealing with some of the crap that they were breathing in. We're gonna hear about this for potentially decades. But it also makes me wonder as we rebuild, are we going to be rebuilding with materials that don't have so many
toxins in them? Because I'm a bit concerned that, you know, things burn and all of a sudden we've got mercury going into the air.
Well, that had to come from somewhere.
It wasn't like people just had a whole lot of tune efficient salmon in their cupboards that cooked into the air. There's got to be some reason that mercury is into the air and that lead levels are going up. So as we rebuild, maybe we can think ahead and not use toxic stuff, all right?
Speaking of the chubby AI.
Yeah, whoever painted this portrait may have used the chubby app to use as a guide or something. President Trump has his presidential portrait hung at the Colorado State Capitol, but he doesn't want it there. He actually asked them to take it down. Republicans raised more than ten thousand dollars to commission the oil painting. It was unveiled in twenty nineteen, but now the Senate Minority leader said that he requested the Trump portrait be taken down and replaced
by one that depicts his contemporary likeness. If you look at the picture which I saw last night, he does appear very chubby.
Yeah, it was.
One of the things I think with President Trump is that he always tries to portray himself as being more ideal than his actual physical physical memory uh measurements, And so he'll put out things like, oh, President Trump is six' five and one hundred and eighty pounds and he's just not. Right AND i think he says now he's like two thirty and sixty three or something like. That, Look, Amy i'm six three and a, half AND i hate when people tell Me i'm. Not i'm six three and
a half And i've lost. Weight i'm down to two forty five. Now and there is no way in hell That trump is thinner than.
Me And I'm i'm a little. Thick he is a lot. Thick BUT i will give him.
Credit that photograph or that that portrait In colorado made him look like he had these, big Weird, uh like nuke gingrich. Jowls they were just thick underneath here he. Was he was a chunkey monkey on that.
One he did say on Truth social that he would prefer no picture rather than that, picture and then said that his picture was up Near President. Obamas, yeah and he said that picture painted by the same. Person, yeah And obama looks wonderful in his.
Deliberately So trump Says obama looks. Wonderful, yeah so there's your breaking news. Story tump Pays obama.
COMPLIMENT nasa is outlining how they're going to respond To President trump's order that federal agencies eliminate waste bloat in. Insolarty they don't know how these changes are going to affect The space agency planning to implement the reorganization. Plan they're going to also try to establish a permanent lunar.
Settlement so how do you establish a.
Permanent lunar settlement while you are, reorganizing while you may be experiencing federal.
LAYOFFS nasa doesn't.
Really know at this, point so they, said over the past few, weeks an internal team has defined a strategy to identify and act on opportunities for optimizing our organization, man this corporate speak is, tough whether by streamlining, operations reducing duplicative reporting and, analysis or finding areas to accelerate
decision velocity or identifying cost savings. Measures that is a word salad rather than prescribing specific changes at this, point our initial submission outlined areas we will explore to find the best approach for our agency's. Future in other, words we ain't cutting, squat but we'll keep an eye on people who are screwing.
Around they.
Said in the coming, weeks we will evaluate where we can make these changes while also considering the potential for any new priorities from the administration and the next administrator once. Confirmed how do we establish a looterar base and put somebody On mars when we don't know what changes need to be. Made so, yeah so that's going on.
Now the head Of samsung has. Died the CO Ceo Han. Jung he died from cardiac. Arrest according to a spokesperson In South, korea he had Overseen samsung's consumer electrics and mobile devices business since twenty twenty.
Two, wow he was only sixty.
Three, yeah, yeah sixty. THREE i would imagine that's a very stressful.
JOB i would imagine, Too but like My samsung ice, maker they died way before the expected life lifeline. There had they tried like with THE, tv if it doesn't, work sometimes they just tap on the side and it comes back to.
Life did they try tapping on just right on the so? Bad Han han.
His warranty ran, out what's going? On that's not, funny that's.
Rude it is it is, actually that's.
Not, Funny Amy, king don't laugh at.
That it's a bad.
Taste it's. Terrible it's too.
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