An important thing about growing up and being a mature adult human being is understanding that what's important to you might not be important to your interlocutor, having a sense of self awareness, having a clue. As my dad might put it, this is the predicament that maybe the presdo Bee is in right now, as they breathlessly report. And a piece published today, why did Elon Musk spend nearly
a million dollars to help elect David Valadalo? David Valadoe? Remember, the House of Representatives represents a good portion of King's County and Hilary County and some of the.
South Valley.
Apparently received some million ish dollars from Elon Musk's various political action committees that mister Musk funds.
Here's the president, b Storre.
Elon Musk's America Political Action Committee spent nearly a million dollars trying to get Representative David Valadeo re elected last year. Democrats say that has left the Hanford Republican eager to support the billionaire who's been instrumental in pushing for big government spending cuts. Republicans counted that such a claim is
misleading and wrong. Californians will continue to stand with Congressman Valadeo and reject the dishonest tactics of a party that has lost its way, said Christian Martinez, National Republican Congressional Committee spokesperson. While Valadeo has praised President Donald Trump often and voted with Republicans on major budget issues this year, there is no evidence he's been dealing with Musk. He did, though, see value to the Department of Government efficiency, where Musk
has been a driving force. They're trying a different path than what we've tried in the past, and other efforts we've made haven't been as effective, he told Bakersfield Bakersfield's twenty three ABC's Mike Hart last week. Democrats see a close connection between Musk's views and Valadeo's actions. No matter how much he tries to spin it or hide it, David Valadeo will always be beholden to his chief campaign financier, Elon Musk, said Viet Shelton, spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee. These desperate attempts by out of touch Democrats to mislead Californians are not just sad the Republicans, Martinez said, they're embarrassing all right, So they look then into Musks spending through this America Pack. America Pack as a super pack founded and largely funded by Musk. It spent about one hundred and seventy three million dollars during the twenty twenty four election cycle on independent expenditures that means it
could spend unlimited amounts to boost or oppose candidates. The group spent one hundred forty three point eight million to help elect Trump last year, according to data compiled by Open Secrets and non partisan research firm. Valadeo's campaign was not allowed to coordinate with Musk's pack. America Pack did not respond to a request for comment. FEC records show that it tried to help three California members of Congress, Valadeo and Representatives Ken Calvert, a Republican from Corona, and
Michelle Steele, a Republican from Steeal Beach. Calvert won and Steel lost. The pack spent nine hundred eighty three thousand, four hundred eighty four dollars to help Valadeo win. He had been considered vulnerable since Democrat Joe Biden won his district in twenty twenty. And this is the crux of it.
Okay.
Musk in the last election cycle became a big time Republican funder. He was giving to Republican causes, so he was most enthused I think about Donald Trump. He gives Trump a bunch of money, and then clearly Republicans were talking with him and we're like, hey, listen, we have a couple of House seats that are really important and really in dispute, and we'd like, you know, for Trump to be able to govern, we need, you know, to make sure that we win a couple of these House seats.
Particularly in California.
Valdeo's seat was going to be very tightly contested. John Duarte versus Adam Gray was going to be very hotly contested.
So they convinced Musk to.
Use this Political Action Committee to give some money there. And I think that has to be kind of understood. This is I mean, we have this breathless story in the Fresno b and that's what That's what I was leading off with about having a sense of what is actually important.
I think the.
Alleged hatred for Elon Musk by the American public more broadly is overstated. I don't think most Americans really dislike him.
All that much.
Maybe some Americans are a little annoyed at whatever role he seems to be playing within the current Trump administration, and it seems like Elon is taking a lot of the heat that could otherwise have.
Gone to Trump. Maybe that's part of the point.
I don't think most people despise him, though certainly not the way that democrats or the media do. I think democrats in the media want to build up enough of a body of negative stories on Musk to the point that his person, his character, is toxic, and thus any connection to him will itself be toxic. This is a common thing that the media and Democrats do is try to build up a kind of what I call the fog of news. We haven't actually established that someone is
a really bad guy. We just report enough small negative pieces about this person to build up the perception in the minds of enough of the American public that this is an unacceptable kind of person. And that's what they're trying to do with Musk, and I guess that's I just find that to be a little silly, the idea that Valideo is just a whipping boy for whatever Musk
wants to do. Look, if you've got Valideo voting on some kind of ridiculous spending measure that is going to directly benefit makers of electric car companies, including Elon Musk, and you can show some kind of direct nexus between Valadeo voting on something that's directly benefiting Musk's business interests and Musk super Pac gave him a million dollars. Okay, maybe we can make a story out of it, but that connection hasn't been made the whole idea of super
Pac funding. So that's this is an important thing to understand. Most of the time, there are campaign contribution limits for someone for an individual to give money to.
A politician.
So if Elon Musk pulls out his checkbook and wants to write a check directly, he himself directly wants to write a check to support David Valadeo and meets with David Valdeo in his office and says, Hi, David Valadeo, my name is an Elon Musk. I would like to give you money to help support your campaign. Great, Elon, why don't you give me? Well, unfortunately, all you can do is give me whatever is the top max individual contribution, which I believe is like six thousand something dollars. I
believe it's under ten thousand dollars. And that's all you can do, Elon Musk. That's the limit of your campaign contribution. However, if Elon Musk starts a super pack, a super political action committee, an organization that exists to provide funding or support to political campaigns, he can do that with no spending limit whatsoever. The only hitch is that this super pack of Elon Musk's it can't and any superpack. This
is how all super packs work. This super pac cannot directly coordinate with the candidate in question, So it Elon can't call David Valadeo up and say, hey, David, I'm gonna spend a million dollars on your campaign. Oh thank you,
mister Musk. Why don't you have the money be directed towards you know, this amount of mailers and this amount of television ads, and put television ads here and play some television ads during you know, during this NFL playoff, during during this NFL game, and blah blah blah blah bout you know, make sure you have some ads playing during the Notre Dame USC game and blah blah. No, Valideo can't coordinate that with Musk. That's the idea. With
super PACs, it's a political action committee. It's a free standing thing. It can make contributions in favor of in support of one candidate or another, but it's not allowed to coordinate with the candidate or with the candidate's campaign.
Okay, So.
This is not something as a result that Valadeo was necessarily directing or coordinating at all, which I think is a relevant part of the story. Now, some people, I think roll their eyes at that requirement. Is there some coordination that's going on between super PACs and candidates? Maybe maybe there is, but that theoretically has to be maintained,
and if it's not, there could be penalties. So if that's been maintained, it weakens the argument that Valadeo is Elon Musk's whipping boy who just does whatever Elon Musk tells him to do. Secondly, most of the things that are being mentioned in this article is about stuff Elon wants to cut.
And what.
Commitment David Valadeo is going to have towards cutting those things. So a big part of the story is about medicaid. Musk told Fox Business host Larry Kudlow on March tenth. On March tenth, broadcast that waste and fraud and entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are the
big one to eliminate. One month since President Trump took office, Californians are holding David Valadeo and Ken Calverts to the feet for standing idly by where while they're extreme party bosses consider taking a hatchet to critical programs like Medicaid that families in the Valley and Riverside County rely. On set of February twentieth Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee statement. So this is this is why Democrats are pointing all this out.
And it's funny that.
I mean, you know, the present note B is just basically acting here as the Democratic parties you know, campaigning spokespersons that basically they're trying to make this the big argument they want to make. The one way in which David Valadeo at one point lost his House seat was back in twenty seventeen, David Valadeo voted with the other Republicans to appeal Obamacare, which would have resulted in a shrinking of the pool of people eligible for Medicaid. That's
why he lost in twenty eighteen. Valadeo lost his House seat in twenty eighteen to TJ.
Cox.
He managed to regain it in twenty twenty, but he lost that House seat because of this, because of how he voted on Medicaid. And so Democrats want to make a direct line of Elon Musk wants to cut Medicaid. Elon Musk gave David Valadeo a million dollars. David Valadeo's an evil guy. Now, it is also important to realize
this with Valadeo, He's not exactly some doctrinaire Republican. Nobody has gotten less credit from the Fresno Bee than David Validat, you know, the Fresno Bee, which tries to position itself, as.
You know, above the Fray.
They can't just come out and say, yeah, our editorial board is liberal Democrats, and we believe in the political priorities of the modern day Democratic Party.
We are liberals. That's who we are and what we believe in.
And so as a result of our editorial board, we tend to support Democrats unless there's something so.
Absurd that, you know, maybe we'll support a Republican. But that's who we are.
That the Fresno BEE never does that. They should do that because basically, when they endorse candidates or oppost candidates anytime, anytime it's like really important or just all things being equal, they endorse the Democrat like nine times out of ten, unless maybe it's it's a race where it's so out of reach for the Democrat, maybe they're just like, yeah, right, But here's David val Here's David Belladale going through puberty on the radio. Here's David Valadaloe, who voted to impeach
Donald Trump after January sixth, genuinely did that. He actually voted to impeach Trump on January sixth. I think he might be the only member of the Republican member of the House left who voted to impeach Donald Trump. The Fresno b has given him exactly zero credit for that. It bought him seemingly like they were, David Valadeo voted to impeach President Trump. We respect that decision of his.
They've never supported him. Here they are running this story, which is just a bunch of Democrat campaign talking points about why are we focused so much on Valadale Because let me, let me guarantee this a story about a million dollars from Elon Musk going to support David Valadeo and will he do what David Valadeo wants. There are plenty of big time, big money Democrat financiers who give big money to Democrat congressional candidates, and you can make some shadowy story about.
Is this Democrat doing whatever George Soros wants?
The Fresno Bee would never run a story like that, ever, George Soros gave a million dollars to this member of Congress. Is he just going to be George Soros's whipping boy? And it might have been in Soros's case it Soros was giving a gazillion dollars to Democrats nationwide, and this was a tight race, so we wound up given this race more money. It's not as though there's a nefarious plot on Elon Musk's part.
Ahha, David Valadeo is my instrument to inflict my will upon Congress.
No, David Valadeo is in a tight race. Musk wanted a Republican majority. He needs to give more money in that case to Republicans who were in tight races. But of course you would never in a million years see the president be.
Oh the well to George Soros specifically.
Want big time political financiers do this kind of stuff. They do it at the local level, they do it at the national level, they do it at the statewide level. I mean, the whole story about George Soros flooded district attorney races in big cities which were relatively small dollar races, flooded the zone with way more money for one specific candidate than anyone had ever seen before to get ultra left wing district attorneys elected who would single handedly completely
reshape criminal law for that big city. That strategy that he employed in all kinds of cities all across the country, the chase of budin alex gascon types. That was like a real, open, genuine nationwide strategy that Soros was like openly bragging about. And the Fresno and newspapers across the country acted like Republicans were engaged in anti submit genuinely accused Republicans of engaging in anti Semitic conspiracy theories for pointing it out because Soros happens to be Jewish. No,
this is not a conspiracy theory. This is his open, obvious strategy. He wanted to fundamentally reshape American criminal law, and he did it through specific investments of political funding into races that wouldn't ordinarily have that much money spent. So anyway, the idea that we're going to make a big time nationwide Republican financier gave a local Republican.
A bunch of money, Is he just going to do whatever he wants?
Well, yes, Republicans get in Republicans and Democrats get influenced to do the things that their donors want. Elon Musk is hardly the one thing that is going to lead David Valadeo to want to support whatever unpopular thing that the Presno B is angry at him about. We'll talk about Medicaid and waste and fraud and stuff like that.
After the break. This is John Girardi on the John Girardi Show. Here on Power Talk Fresno.
B breathlessly reports that David Valadeo is aligned with Elon Musk. Elon Musk gave him a million dollars, So David Valadeo is going to do whatever he wants.
And it's like, well, is he really was he already going to do?
I mean, the whole Republican Party is fairly well aligned on a lot of their policy priority now the big thing, and you know, look, Elon Musk was giving money to Republicans nationwide. Of course, he gave more money to local races. It's not like David Valadeo is his particular creature. Valadeo was just a Republican and a tight race, so as
a result, he got more money. Now, and this is I think a very lazy article that to be published about this where they sort of just lay out every Democrat talking point is Elon Musk's you know, support for cutting medicaid is, does David Valadeo want to cut Medicaid for his constituents? For cutting the Department of Education? Does David Valadeo want to cut education? Cutting the Department of Education being you know, not something at all different from
cutting education in and of itself. This is all stuff that Republicans wanted to do. Anyway, Elon Musk's presence isn't actually changing the fact that Medicaid is a massive entitlement. It's grown to be this massive entitlement program with really runaway spending, like it's a genuine problem just from a fiscal perspective, so how are you going to do that?
Will you either do it with you know, crushing tax increases or with cutting something And there's stuff to be cut with Medicaid, especially when it comes to like fraud or waste. Like you know, I've for the most part, I've been pretty skeptical of Trump's slash Elon's claims that we can cut out fraud and abuse and that that's gonna result in massive savings, you know.
I will note though, with Medicaid, which is, you.
Know, a huge, huge entitlement that I think is approaching a trillion dollars in annual spending, there is some argument that as much as five percent, so it's a bit
less than a trillion dollars. There's an argument that about five percent of Medicaid's expenditures, which is insurance reimbursements, reimbursements to cover the cost of someone receiving healthcare reimbursement to the doctor, that like five percent of their reimbursements are wrongly given out, which in real world dollars is about thirty billion dollars. Like that that is not nothing, that's a chunk. Now, is it going to make a dent?
As far as the big picture. I don't know, but it's not like there's no fraud or waste in the system to cut. And if someone wanted to vote for something to make Medicaid sleeker and more streamlined. And also I mean, there should be maybe some assessment of focusing Medicaid on the stuff that it was intended to help with when it was originally founded, people with disabilities, pregnant women, like, there were certain groups so called legacy enroll lees in
Medicaid that the program was designed to help with. And the problem is it just got expanded, expanded, expanded, expanded to just be health insurance for lower income people with no sort of like work requirements or assessment of how able bodied you are, like able bodied adults without kids. Maybe maybe that's someone where we can sort of say, hey,
you need to go help yourself. Like the idea that Medicaid is sacra saying that there's no way to cut it is pure politics, but it's a very effective talking point. That's the problem is that people here that you want to cut medicaid, people here that you want to cut medical, they have insurance.
They have medical. That really drives votes.
That's why David Valadeo lost in twenty eighteen, and Democrats want.
To repeat that again.
When we returned some major abortion related news, A massive news study about the abortion pill and why it's important. That's next on the John Girardi Show. The Ethics and Public Policy Center in DC's this DC think tank, sort of aligned with various pro life and social conservative policies.
Released a paper.
That is just released it today by Jamie Brian Hall and Ryan T.
Anderson.
This is the largest study of its kind looking into the adverse impacts of the abortion pill. And this couldn't be more timely with the start of the Trump administration. Now with the head of the FDA in place, with RFK Junior in place, let's talk about it, and let me first explain why this is important. So, for just a primer, what is quote the abortion pill? What heck am I talking about when I say the word? And I'm going to talk about this on for this upcoming
Saturday's Right to Life Radio. But this is important enough that I think I got to talk about it today as well.
So this.
Topic of the abortion pill, I think is largely not understood by most of the American public. When I say the word abortion, I think most of you listening probably still think of surgery. You think of a surgical intervention performed by a doctor. Now, first I'll tell you that in California, it doesn't have to be performed by a doctor.
It can be About ten or.
Fifteen years ago, the state legislature changed the law to say, oh, a nurse, a practitioner can do it. And then about two years ago the state legislature changed the law and said, oh, physicians' assistants.
Can do it.
Before long, California will loose an abortion laws so much or will be able to perform surgical abortions. However, over sixty percent of abortions are no longer performed surgically, and that's a number that's changed significantly over the last eight years. Eight years ago, about thirty nine percent of abortions were performed by taking a drug. Today it is over sixty percent. Somewhere around sixty three percent of abortions are performed by
taking a drug. By taking a pill, this is the abortion pill, otherwise known as by its actual name is mifepristone.
That's the name of the drug.
So basically how the process works is and by the way, this is different from the morning after pill. The morning after pill is a different drug called levone or gestrel. Lavone or gestral is taken within you know, the morning after of a sexual encounter, and its chief mechanism is to try to prevent the woman from releasing an egg.
Ovulating, so.
Most of the time it is genuinely contraceptive. However, it does have this backup mechanism to make the inner lining of the uterus hostile to receiving a newly formed embryo, so it might be a moortifacient. Its primary mechanism, though, is to try to prevent ovulating. That's the morning after pill. I'm not talking about that here. I'm talking about the abortion pill. Miph A pristone mif A pristone is a drug that can be taken up to ten weeks into a pregnancy, and what it does is it inhibits this
hormone called progesterone. Progesterone is very important for ongoing health of the pregnancy. It alters the inner lining of a woman's uterus, which results in the baby detaching from the uterine wall. The baby is then cut off from oxygen nutrients. The baby dies again. This is within the first ten weeks of pregnancy. So at this is the first six weeks of pregnancy, we call the baby an embryo. After that we call the baby a fetus. So the embryo or fetus dies. The woman then takes a second drug
called misaprostol. Some of you may have heard of that drug. It's a legitimate drug. It helps induce labor. This results in the baby being expelled from the woman's body. Now, one of the cagy things about I believe when you really look at the issue and really examine it with
a critical eye, is how safe is the abortion pill process. Well, it seemed to have a certain level of safety back prior to the end of the Obama administration, when it could only be prescribed with three in clinic patient visits. You had to have a preliminary visit, a visit where you actually received and ingested the drug in front of a physician, and then you needed a follow up visit, and it could only be prescribed in the first seven weeks.
Think of it like a miscarriage, a miscarriage that happens. The later on in a pregnancy that a miscarriage happens, the more medical complications there are.
Likely to be for the woman. Okay.
So when the abortion pill was first approved, it was only approved for the first seven weeks with three clinic visits, and President Obama said, well, it's safe for seven weeks and three clinic visits, so let's make it ten weeks and one clinic visit which didn't follow. If it was safe this way, what made you think it would continue to be safe with fewer safety restrictions. Maybe it was more safe before because you had the safety recive restrictions.
Those safety restrictions are really only an argument for themselves, they're not an argument for less safety. So in twenty sixteen, Barack Obama changes a lot of the rules around the abortion pill his FDA. In twenty sixteen, only one in person clinic visit required, no follow up required, which is critical, and it can be prescribed through the first ten weeks of pregnancy. And we change the reporting requirements now, instead of reporting any adverse incident, you only have to report
an adverse incident that results in the patient's death. So since twenty sixteen, the Centers for Disease Control the federal government has not been collecting mandatorially adverse health outcome consequences from the abortion pill. As the abortion pill has vaulted to being the most dominant method of abortion provision. Where today you're there are about six hundred thousand women every year having abortions via the abortion pill, and it's.
Clear that thousands and thousands.
Of them are having some kind of adverse health outcome, but it's not being reported. There were plenty of instances of adverse health outcomes when it was required to be reported, and you just made the safety standards looser, not stricter. Well, President Biden ramped this up further. He said that the
abortion pill. His FDA in twenty twenty one allowed the abortion pill to be prescribed with no in person visit, just with a telemedicine visit, maybe not even with a doctor, with a nurse practitioner or a physician assistant, and the abortion pill to be shipped to you through the mail. Now, this line that the pro abortion advocates have used is that the abortion pill it's as safe as taking a toilet, all as safe as taking a tilool, which.
Was always deceptive.
Basically, they tried to compare the adverse outcome rates from taking the abortion pill and compared it to overdosing on tilanol.
Overdosing on tailand.
All, yeah, was about as safe as taking an abortion pill as far as the number of adverse outcomes.
Okay.
But when they frame it as the abortion pills as safe as a tile in all, you think, oh, okay, So it has basically no adverse health outcomes like taking a tilol.
No, they were deceptively.
Manipulating their words and manipulating the data. Now Alexandra Dusanctus, who writes for National Review and is a fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, has the write up. For decades, the pro life movement has maintained that every abortion has at least two victims, the unborn child and the pregnant mother. From a new report reaffirm that far from being a healthcare solution, chemical abortion poses significant physical
risks to women. This morning, the Ethics and Public Policy Center where I am a fellow where she is a fellow, released a paper that is the largest known study of the abortion pills after effects for women. The research shows that chemical abortion is considerably more dangerous to pregnant women
than the Food and Drug Administration presently admits. Chemical abortion uses two drugs, mifopristone, which blocks progesterone from sustaining the unborn child, and misupprostyl, which causes contractions that expel the unborn child. According to this new research, nearly eleven percent of women experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious adverse
event within forty five days following a mifipristone abortion. Eleven percent of women who go through the abortion pill process have some seal cious adverse event.
That's a huge rate.
The drug label from mifepristone, by contrast, claims that less than point five percent of women experienced a serious adverse event based on results of clinical trials. In other words, the rate of serious adverse events following chemical abortions appears to be at least twenty two times as high as
the summary figure that the FDA discloses. The new research is based on an analysis of data from an all payer insurance claims database, including more than eight hundred and sixty five thousand prescribed chemical abortions between twenty seventeen and twenty twenty three. The point five percent rate presented by abortion pill manufacturer dan Co Laboratory, so the FDA is running with this rate given by the company that makes the abortion pill.
The FDA says, oh, well, the company that makes.
The abortion pill says point five percent of all people taking it have a serious adverse.
Event, So we'll run with that.
The point five percent rate presented by abortion pill manufactured dan CO laboratories, and the FDA relies on information from ten clinical trials with just shy of thirty one thousand participants. The new data set covers twenty eight times as many chemical abortions as were included in all the FDA cided clinical trials combined. This data is also more current and more representative of the American population than the data that the FDA relies on for its figures.
Okay, so.
The abortion pill is way more dangerous than we thought. When we return what that could mean as far as public policy. That is next on the John Gerardi Show. New study comes out showing that the abortion pill the most common way that abortion happens. Over sixty percent of American abortions happen this way is way more dangerous than
the FDA has ever admitted. Based on a survey looking at eight hundred thousand abortions, it shows that eleven percent of women experienced some serious adverse event sepsis, hemorrhage, infection. So what does this mean public policy wise? Okay, let me make this point. The abortion pill is the biggest driver of abortion in America today, period, end of sentence,
full stop. When President Biden changed the FDA's regulations around the abortion pill to allow it to be prescribed with a telemedicine visit i e. Not in person, and shipped to patients directly through the mail, shipped to pregnant women directly through the mail, or allowed it to be picked up at major pharmacies, it resulted in the total number of American abortions jumping by about one hundred thousand extra abortions every year, from nine hundred thousand abortions a year
to a million abortions per year.
That's an enormous jump.
It's the biggest driver of abortion today, and it makes a mockery of individual states having laws banning abortion why.
Because they're pills, they're portable, they're shippable.
The postal Service is not doing a darn thing to stop them being shipped through the mail. So it's leading. There's some people who are arguing there are more abortions happening in Texas now than there were prior to Texas outlawing abortion after the Dobs decision. Why because people are shipping in the abortion pill, we need to aggressively regulate
the abortion pill. Now, the Trump administration, you know, Trump during the campaign was kind of cagy about, Oh, not sure if I want to completely cut off access to the abortion pill. But what could the Trump administration do? They said, aref K. Junior said during his congressional testimony he was going to assess the issue carefully and he was going to decide what he and Trump want to do as far.
As regulating the abortion pill.
Well, this is relevant new data. It is way more dangerous than was ever claimed. So this gives yet more ammo to the idea.
That stricter.
Regulation, tighter regulation on the abortion pill to make it less lucy goosey flying around all over the place is necessary and important. And again it's the only thing. Look, you can have Dobs on the books, you can have individual states limiting abortion. Abortion is still a federal issue, and it's a federal issue because of the abortion pill. As much as Republicans want to say it's a states situe, it's a station issue. The abortion pill is regulated by
the federal government. Its approval is from the federal government, from the federal FDA. It has to be decided by President Trump, and this gives amo for him to.
Really aggressively regulate it. That'll do it. John Girardi Show, seey'all next time on Power Talk.