Javier Besarah has announced that he is running for governor of California, and this show is going to talk about it all right. I want to in detail talk about it because I think it means a lot of things from a lot of different angles. And in announcing that he was running for governor, but Sarah gave maybe one of the more remarkable interview answers I've ever heard a politician give, just an absolute master class in bsing. So we're going to get to all of it. So let's
start with this hobby. Aerbasara is running for governor. I have been joking with friends for the last month about the possibility of Kamala Harris running for governor, and you know, obviously not a fan, I've talked at length about how I think she's the worst. She's terrible. She would probably just completely dominate if she decided to run for governor of California, because just on name recognition alone, I think
she would easily win. And I had to take all of it back about her being the worst when Bessarah jumped in, because Bessarah might have been my least favorite person in the entire Biden administration, including Harris. Javier Bessara is the worst. He is an aggressively pro abortion partisan hack. He let's remember his what legacy does Besara have? So okay,
Besarah was a member of the House. He then becomes the Attorney General of California, and as Attorney General of California, he was basically the chief litigator against Donald Trump in the first Trump administration. He filed lawsuit after lossit after lawsuit in his role as Attorney General of California, lassit after lawson after lawsuit against President Trump. He was like one of the leading lights of the hashtag resistance, the
legal resistance against President Trump. And he was richly rewarded for his efforts by being nominated in twenty twenty one to serve as the Secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services. And by the way, let's recall what a crown jewel being the HHS secretary is. Just as far as dollars managed. The Secretary of HHS is managing a budget that's bigger than pretty much any other cabinet secretary. Like it's over a trillion dollars we're talking about, especially
with Medicare and Medicaid. That's what the Secretary of HHS is overseeing. It's a humongous role. He's one of the most It's one of the most prominent roles within any presidential administration. You know what would be the biggest cabinet positions. Probably it's Secretary of State, Attorney General, Secretary of Defense,
and Health and Human Services. I mean, it's probably it's probably the single most important I guess other than the Attorney General, which has some it's mostly domestic, but probably the single most important cabinet posts dealing with domestic issues is AHHS. So bisserah is richly rewarded for his resistance, and when he was nominated for HHS and got confirmed in twenty twenty one, Republicans were understandably kind of bewildered.
I mean, he seems like the kind of person who would have, you know, fit in well with the Biden administration as a Biden administration appointee. But AHHS, the guy has no background with healthcare whatsoever. Are we why make him in charge of HHS. He seems to have had no sort of interaction with intersection with expertise in the healthcare industry at all. And the only answer that could come back was that jab or Basera was just a total abortion radical, even though I would say abortion is
not healthcare at all. Maybe if you want to argue it's healthcare adjacent. I guess Visarah was an aggressive proponent of legal abortion, and that was like the only thing the Biden administration could sort of point to as sort of sort of relevant hhustice experience. And but Sarah carried
over his aggressive left wing attitudes into HHS. I think it was during his testimony, during his confirmation hearings, he said that he could not think of a single legal restriction of abortion that he on abortion that he would support. I don't know, the third trimester, no, not one. And as Secretary of HHS, he carried over his pro abortion positions.
I mean, one of the things he tried to do was after Rove Wade was overturned, the Biden administration tried to interpret m TALA, which is a federal law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act. M TALA is basically, it's this law that was originally passed in nineteen eighty six, and it governs emergency rooms and hospitals that for hospitals that receive Medicare patients. So it's certain kinds of standards
for emergency rooms. This novel and interpretation of MTALA that had never before been seen or done or attempted to say that every emergency room in America has to offer abortion services, a totally novel interpretation that would violate the state laws of a number of states that had outlawed abortion. President Trump has dropped that interpretation of MTALA immediately upon assuming office. So I despise Javier Bessara, but I want
you guys to listen to this remarkable interview. If you want to watch it yourself after this, you finished listening to this show, go to my Twitter account Twitter dot com slash Fresno Johnny at Fresno Johnny, I've retweeted it.
This was an interview that the Sarah sat down for with the Fox broadcast news television station in law Los Angeles, Fox eleven I think it's KTTV, and with their anchor Lex Michaelson, and he asks Bessarah this question about, well, you know, Democrats have run things for a while, what would you do different? I want you guys to listen to this answer. It's really remarkable. Here here's Alex Michaelson starting off with question, and Besarah starts trying to answer.
Too expensive to live in California for a lot of people, right, that housing affordability, it is all the rest of that. But whose fault is that? Because Democrats have had a super majority in Sacramento for decades now run every statewide office, isn't that the Democrats fault?
Well, it's a growing issue we've had. Remember we've had Republican governors as well. At home.
Yeah, Arnold Towrzenegger was elected in two thousand and six.
I gary you, so we're starting off great. Alex Michaelson says, Hey, whose fault is it that we have high costs of living? Housing costs? Democrats have controlled everything, And but Sarah says, oh, well we've had Republican governors. Yeah, but not for fifteen years. You're gonna blame Arnold Schwarzenegger. What's next? You're gonna drag up George Duke masion.
We continue to you homes in California two thousand and six. We're too expensive back then.
You know, but it's gone up a lot in the last twenty years.
We have not tackled it the way we should. And I think principally, the reason we have this issue in California on prices is because we haven't built enough, and that means it's a type market. Everyone still wants to come to California. People may be levy, but there are a whole bunch of people who would love to be at a live in California.
But from a policy Okay, so here's we haven't built enough. He refuses to say that it's the Democrat's fault. We haven't tackled the issue. Well, who is the we here? First he disclaims it by trying to somehow drag up Republican governors. He cannot, and again he has to drag out the corpses of you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger and I don't know Pete Will, I don't know unnamed Republican governors, again refusing to acknowledge the last fifteen years we've had
a Democrat governor and Democrat supermajorities in the legislature. So whose fault is it? We need to build more? Ah, what a novel solution that everyone's been saying for the last fifteen years and no one has actually done. We continue, let's.
See perspective, what specific change are you proposing that would be different than the status quo right now, that would make a difference and make prices less in California.
Yeah, I can tell you that status quo business as usual is not on California California voter's mind as the thing to do. And so I think all of us are going to be talking change. But here's what I would do. I would take the experience I had having to lead this country at the Department of Health and Human Services out of a pandemic, a once in a lifetime pandemic, having to negotiate for the first time in our history the lower prices for prescription drugs of some of them.
Do you notice that we're not even close to approaching an answer to that question? He says, all that no one wants the status quo. I would take my experience that I had, as Ah says, negotiating drug prices during the pandemic a once in a lifetime event. And if you're wondering, okay, well is he going to get around to an answer here, Well, keep waiting.
The most expensive drugs that our seniors on Medicare program have to use, I would say, you need to bring the problem right to the table with the best experts there. You scrub it and then what whatever is left, whatever's clean and survives. That's what you do. And we've not been willing to do that because of all the politics, all the old.
Oh my gosh, all right, so much to work with here. Okay, Remember he was asked about what is a specific policy proposal that you Javier Basera, You Javier Baserro, who is running for governor of California, doing this interview on a big TV station in Los Angeles. Right after he announces, Javier Basera, what specific policy would you enact to reduce
cost of living in particularly for home prices. His answer, after all the bs and throat clearing about how wonderful he was during a once in a lifetime pandemic and helping out our seniors with lower cost of drugs from medicare, blah blah blah, usual politician, Yes, he finally says he would get a bunch of experts together, bring all the ideas to the table and scrub it out. He keeps using that verb scrub it out until we find what's left.
Let's think about what that means. What he means, I think what he's saying is I don't actually have an idea. My idea is to gather experts together, get their ideas, and distill them down. So why the hell would we vote for you? Why don't we vote for some of these experts. They're the guys with ideas. Why are we voting for you? And here he is a big time interview on a big television news broadcast in Los Angeles.
What specific he's acknowledging nobody wants the status quo and his idea is gather all the experts together and listen to them, as if Democrats haven't been doing that for a while. And this is a thing with jab Or Bessera that I think I'm starting to learn here what was his approach to COVID. His approach was that of the Biden administration, which was effectively, trust the experts. We do what the public health so called experts tell us.
We should do. Whatever the sort of credential middle management professional managerial class tells us to do, That's what we do. As if that hasn't been a major part of California governance over the last fifteen years. The expert opinions of academia, government, et cetera. Saying that your plan for reducing affordability is just to gather all the experts together and scrub out their ideas until you come up with the best solution.
That's no proposal at all. You're hiding the foot. You either actually do have ideas of what you're going to do and you're just afraid to say them, or you don't even have an idea, in which case, why on earth would we vote for you for governor? And either this is Javi orb Sarah, we're talking about Javierbserra, former Attorney General of California, the secretary of HHS. This guy is extremely plugged in with national and California Democrat politics,
within the legal community, within academia. Like it's not like he can't get those experts now, it's not like he couldn't have gotten those experts at any time over the last two months. And it's not like he's a total dummy. I mean, he's an attorney, he's been in public policy, he's been a member of the House, he's been involved and concerned with California politics. He was Attorney General of California.
In theory, nobody should understand California public policy issues or few people should understand California public policy issues better than he does. You mean to tell me he couldn't have gathered those experts together to scrub their ideas out on his own and then, like you know, come to the table, maybe do all that scrubbing that allegedly he's gonna do before he sits down for this interview. When we return, we will see Javier Abisserra yet again not answer anything
that he would do as governor of California. That is next on the John Girardi Show. Javier Bessera, former Attorney General of California than the former Secretary of Health and Human Services under Barack Obama, announced that he is running for governor of California. The only person in America who might be worse than Kamala Harris. And he had this remarkable interview with Fox eleven in Los Angeles and with
their news anchor Elex Michaelson. It's remarkable in interview in which Michaelson gives him opportunity after opportunity to say, what specific policies would you propose or push for that are different from what the Democrat status quo in Sacramento has advanced over the last fifteen years, Democrats have had total control over everything. They've had total control over the governor's man, the governor's does the governor have a mansion in California,
I don't know. Over the governor's office, over the State Assembly, over the State Senate, over the courts, over the whole executive branch apparatus, all the appointed boards, everything. Democrats have had complete control for fifteen years. And housing affordability is terrible. And we're still dealing with these same problems that Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom said they would deal with when they started running for governor. So what are you going
to do differently? And Bessarah just won't say what he's going to do. Let's listen again to this exchange between Michaelson and Bessarah Born.
But from a policy perspective, what specific change are you proposing that would be different than the status quo right now that would make a difference and make prices less in California.
Yeah, I can tell you that status quo business as usual is not on California California voter's mind as the thing to do. And so I think all almost going to be talking change. But here's what I would do.
All of us are going to be talking change, but here's what I would do. Do you really no content was transmitted at the start of that question. That was a throat clearing hamahmahama. Let me think of something to say. Here, he goes, I.
Would take the experience I had having to lead this country at the Department of Health and Human Services.
All right, this is where he starts preaching about how wonderful he was at HHS and helping out seniors, negotiating price for Medicare drugs, all the normal politician bull crap where they try, you know, just appealing to senior citizen voters because they're the best, most reliable voters anyway.
The lower prices for prescription drugs of oh my god, expensive drugs that are seniors on that, I would say, you need to bring the problem right to the table with the best experts. There, you scrub it and then whatever is left, whatever's clean and survives. That's what you do. And we've not been willing to do that because of all the politics, all the old ways of doing things.
All right, let's listen to that. Let's think about that answer. So we talked about that in the last segment. His proposal is to gather all the experts, bring all the ideas for how to Apparently this is for lowering costs of housing to the table. Scrub it his words, not mine, Scrub it and see what's left over, which, as I said in the last segment, why are we voting for you? Then, if you haven't already done that, you, Javier Bacerra, who
have ready access to any experts you want. Okay, you were the secretary of HHS, you were a former attorney general. You have plenty of friends in academia, in the legal realm, in public policy. Likely you can get those expert opinions
anytime you want. You could have gotten those expert opinions, surveyed them, scrub them out and then actually, you know, had a policy proposal before you announce you you were running for governor, before you sat down for this interview, Like, why should we vote for you if you know, I don't want to vote for a governor who I don't know and he doesn't even know apparently what he's going to do. He's just gonna wait until he hears from
the experts. Secondly, he says during that answer. We haven't been willing to do that, i e. Gather together experts, get all their ideas on the table, and scrub it out to see what the best ideas are because of all the politics, he says, what politics. Democrats control every statewide office, from governor to insurance commissioner, governor, lieutenant governor, Secretary of State, Attorney general, insurance commissioner, what is a treasurer.
They own the courts, They own all of the executive appointee boards like the California Air Resources Board, the California Coastal Commission, everything. And they don't just have a super majority in the state legislature. You need a two thirds majority in the state legislature to do certain things like qualify a constitutional amendment for the ballot or increased taxes. You need a two thirds majority in the state legislature to do that. Democrats don't just have a super majority.
They have a super duper majority. They have a three quarters majority in the Assembly and in the Senate, sixty of eighty votes in the Assembly, thirty of forty votes in the Senate. Because of all the politics. What politics are you talking about? There are no politics in California. On a certain level. Nobody disagree agrees with each other. Who is in charge. It's one party rule. Also, you haven't had the willingness to gather all the experts. What
do you mean? That's what the Democrat Party does. They completely own academia. You really think that the Democrats in Sacramento would have been unwilling to gather together or haven't. I'm sure they have at some point over the last fifteen years. Gather together some kind of blue ribbon commission of professors from UC Berkeley, UC Davis, Stanford, cal Stanford, UCLA, USC Gather a bunch of liberal professors together who know a thing or two about housing and economics and housing
affordability and whatever. Gather them all together in a room and get policy proposals. You think no one's been willing to do that. Everyone's been willing to do that. He is so full of it. His isyes are turning brown. When we return, Javier Basera is the cardboard box with the letter D on it. Next on the John Girardi Show, Javier Basera announced he's running for governor. He does his first interview and he refuses to say a single thing he would do differently from other Democrats who have gone
before him on the issue of housing affordability. Even though I was saying, oh, no, one wants a status quo. His grand idea is to gather together experts and basically see what they have to say. Here is again his interview with Lex Michaelson from Fox eleven in Los Angeles. Here he is again offered an opportunity to say what he would do differently from the last fifteen years of Democrat governors and not answering there.
A specific policy change that you would propose to make a difference on some of these affordability issues.
I think so housing, I think so, Oh good. I'm glad you think so. Maybe you could know, so let's keep.
Going a development. I think everyone agrees we don't build enough. It's not enough to say, okay, we all agree we don't build enough, and they're not do anything about it. Okay. If we all agree, then everyone from all sides of this sit down scrub.
It from all sides of this. What do you mean from all sides of it? Democrats have three quarters of the votes in the state legislature. They can do whatever they want. Republicans have nothing. They can say, Republicans have been saying ideas different from the status quo, and you've ignored them for fifteen years. He continues, by the way, with this metaphor of getting expert ideas together and scrubbing them out here he is.
Sit down, scrub it because this is what I had to do with COVID. This is what I had to do when we're trying to get rid of monkey pocks, MPOs. This is what I had to do when we were figuring out what prices to negotiate on the drugs. You figure out where we could go, and then you go and you just say, damn the torpedoes, we gotta go.
Again. His question was is there a specific policy proposal you would enact, and his answer again was no. His answer was gathered together expert opinions and pursue them. Now, this leads me to my thesis of Javier Besera the cardboard box with the letter D written on it. I'll admit I had texted friends when I first before I saw this interview, and it was really the first time I'd really sat down and watched Javier Bessera like talk
at length, do a long form, do an interview. I'll admit that I had texted some friends after be Sarah announced that he was running. Besarah might actually be worse than Kamala Harris. I think he might actually be smarter than she is, or maybe more effective than she is. Well, after seeing this interview, I'm not sure that even that's true. This interview might have been worse than as as bad as the worst Kamala Harris interview. He will not say something he will do about policy. All he can do
is talk about gathering together expert opinions. That's what he repeatedly says. He would gather together expert opinions, scrub them out to find the best opinions, and then go with that, which again would raise the question of one, why are you running for governor? Why don't we get some of these experts to run for governor? Two you mean you can't do that now before you run for governor, Like, maybe we would rather vote for someone who we know
what they're going to do. It's not like you are incapable of gathering together expert opinion, surveying expert opinion yourself, and coming forward with your own ideas. And it leads me to this, I think Javier basera is an empty vessel. It's one of the defining features of modern day democrat governance. Trust the experts, trust the science, trust the experts, where we look to the received wisdom of institutions as are
guiding loadstar as are guiding light. You saw this with stuff like content moderation on Facebook and Twitter before Elon Musk bought it that basically, what were they defining as COVID misinformation quote, Well, they would just turn to if you're gonna have a policy of not allowing information to be spread, you need some authority to define what is correct information and what is dangerous misinformation. And so Facebook, Twitter,
et cetera. Were reliant upon institutions HHS Centers for Disease Control, et cetera. And all the big social media companies were doing that. They were just appealing to them, overlooking the possibility that those institutions could be wrong, that those institutions
could be subject to things like regulatory capture. Regulatory capture is the concept you learn about as a lawyer in regulatory law that if you're a regulator works for let's say, the pharmaceutical industry, you become a very attractive future potential hire for companies within the pharmaceutical industry. If you work for HHS, if you work for the Centers for Disease Control, if you work for the FDA, you're a very attractive
possible future hire for Peiser. Maybe Peiser wants an FDA official to leave the FDA and come work for them. You know, at a private industry salary might be three x or four x what you're making working for the government. Come work for Pfiser instead for four x and help us to comply with what the FDA wants us to do with FDA rules and things like that. So there's
this inherent there. There is this tendency within regulatory agencies to treat the industries that they regulate with kid gloves, because from top to bottom, from the head of the FDA all the way down to low level flunkies, there's this thought that, well, hey, how tough do we want
to regulate this industry when it could hire us. You know that there's several former FDA heads went on to become members of the board of directors of Pfizer, guessing it's unlikely they will unlikely they will extend such an offer to RFK Junior now all of this should sort of shade our confidence in relying upon experts, relying upon
the professional managerial class. You look at COVID, for example, which Bessara is like touting his experience during COVID, and like Bisarah, who did nothing other than I'm just doing what the experts tell me, doing what the technocrats who work at HHS, CDC, what Anthony Fauci and all of his ilk Francis Collins, I'm just gonna do what they tell me. I'm gonna keep pushing their vaccine mandates. I'm gonna keep pushing all all of the stuff that they want.
That's what I'm gonna keep pushing. And I'm gonna trash states like Georgia, States like Florida under Republican governors who bucked what that professional managerial class told them to do. Florida, Georgia, et cetera. Reopened their states way before everyone else did, to great success, and in retrospect, a lot of people
look at how long they kept schools closed. And by the way, Bisarah, like any big time California at state level policy, Tian has to kiss the butt of teachers unions, and he continued to kiss the butt of teachers unions. While he was secretary of HHS, schools stayed closed probably a year longer than they should have, with tremendous learning loss across the country for those districts that remained closed for a really long time. But Sarah, as Secretary of HHS,
sat around twiddling his thumbs. He trusted the experts, or the so called experts. And if you're a politician and you just say I'm just gonna do what the experts say, then again I asked the question, why are we voting for you? Why don't we vote for some of these experts. I mean, they seem like the ones who have all the ideas. All you're doing is being a vessel for their ideas. You don't seem to have any ideas of your own. Your idea is just do what the experts say.
And so much of how liberals try to frame what they believe, they try to frame it as trusting the experts. Well, A COG says that abortion pill reversal is silly. The American College of partstitcians kind of collegists, so therefore the abortion pill reversal process is bad. A COG says abortion is just normal health care. So therefore we're right in
saying normal health care. You know, the American Academy of Pediatrics says that transgender surgeries on children are are okay, So and transgenderism is, you know, all the important, the whole ideology of transgenderism. So therefore we appeal to the experts. We appeal to the experts, ignoring the fact that, hey, you don't you don't think that maybe the American Academy of Pediatrics likes money, likes performing unnecessary surgeries, maybe for money,
and maybe rationalizing how necessary those surgeries are. Let's note that in the UK, where doctors don't have as much of a profit motive because it's a government run healthcare system, they've stopped doing transgender surgeries on kids because they realize it yields no benefits as far as kids' mental health.
The whole Democrat Party more and more is sort of trying to ground and premise itself on our beliefs are unchallengeable because so many of these expert institutions in academia and medicine and law in this and that are dominated by the Left. And therefore, when we say what we say, you're not just questioning us for staking out one political position out of many. You are challenging God Almighty on high in the form of some highly credentialed maybe not
that bright liberal who says it shall be so. It's how California has been governed largely for fifteen years, the consensus of liberals in academia, in activism, in you know,
middle management, government, bureaucrat positions. That's what has dragged California as more and more liberals are noticing, like Ezra Kleine, the columnist from New York Times is going on this wrote a book, going on this big world tour about how frustrated he is with liberal dominated states like California that can't get anything done, that are actually failures of governance when Democrats have completely controlled everything for a decade and a half. And Besarah is signaling here, I'm not
doing a dang thing. We always joke about, you know, in a Republican dominated state or a Democrat dominated state, that if you have a cardboard box with the letter D or a cardboard box with the letter R written on it, it would win a statewide election. Javier Bessera is a cardboard box with a letter D. On it an empty vessel, a mirthless humorless character less personality less
empty vessel. For whatever, the dominant Democrat controlling conventional wisdom is signaling no change from what we've had the last fifteen years under Gavin Newsom and Jerry Brown when we return. Does this mean Kamala isn't running? I wonder? Next on the John Girardi Show, So Javier Bsara announces he's running for governor, what does that mean about Kamala Harris. I don't think it is any kind of evidence that she's running, and I think it might be evidence that she's not.
For all of Bessara's flaws, and I've enumerated lots of them, he is plugged into both California and national Democrat politics. He was a very prominent member of the Biden administration. He was former Attorney General of California. He understand, you know, he had to get the backing of big time California donors. He's not a total dummy, and he's a pretty prominent guy. You know, before Harris lost, he probably would have been the most prominent name that would have possibly jumped into
the California governor's race. I find it and look, Harris has only two options available to her if she wants to remain a significant figure in American politics. She either runs for governor of California in twenty six or runs for president in twenty twenty eight. They're kind of mutually exclusive paths. I find it it's hard to think Besarah would jump in if he knew Harris was jumping in, because she's gonna blow whoever runs against her for governor
out of the water just on name recognition alone. I think this might mean Harris is running for president in twenty twenty eight. That'll do it. John Giorady shows you you next time on Power Talk