Ah, It's the breakup of the century, the breakup that maybe we all should have seen coming, given that they both seemed interested in different things. Elon and Donald Trump a brief flash in the pan romance, Like most of Elon's and romances, come to think of it, it gave birth as also Elon romances tend to do to the whole Doge idea, which is now kind of a little bit of a kind of petering out. And I want to talk about sort of what this breakup means now.
I talked a lot during the campaign and shortly after the election about how Elon Musk engaging with the conservative movement could have been maybe still will be to some extent,
but doesn't seem like it's going to be. Musk had said even like a week or two ago that he was not going to be as involved in politics as he was this time around, and it seems like some people have tweeted that he basically did a speed run, so went through the whole thing very quickly of the entire Republican experience in a matter of approximately one year, less than a year, going from you know, delirious optimism, thrilling victory and then inevitable embitterment and disappointment at the
mediocre results of those Republican victories. As the inevitable compromises have to come about. Republicans go through that experience. Usually it takes them, you know, a decade or two before they get to that full circle of embitterment. Elon went through that whole experience in less than a year. Now. I had said during campaign that Musk's, you know, engagement with Republican politics could be transformative to the entire American
political scene. Here is literally the richest man in the world highly engaged with the Republican Party, and in the twenty twenty four cycle, huge donations to Trump, to Republican House candidates, to Republican Senate candidates, huge engagement, huge levels of engagement. And my thought had been, well, look at all of the ways in which let's say, George sorows okay, George Soros like him or not, and I very much do not like him. George Soros has undeniably had a
massive impact on American politics. He has reshaped American criminal law in horrible ways through his brilliant strategy of flooding local district attorney races with huge amounts of huge amounts of cash to back horrible, extremely left wing district attorney candidates for races that usually don't you know, don't involve that much money, and all of a sudden, he's just going to drop, you know, two hundred thousand and five
hundred thousand, two million dollars. He's going to drop two million dollars on a race where all the candidates combined or narrowly wouldn't spend more than two hundred thousand dollars. And by electing an ultra progressive district attorney, he can utilize the power of what's called prosecutorial discretion to basically
just reshape American criminal law within that city. You know, the chase of Boudin types who basically were like, I'm just not going to prosecute any thing short of felony, you know, grand larceny, you know people, So the spectacle of people walking into cvs with their iPhone calculator in hand and stealing, adding up the value of the things they are stealing, just in broad daylight, just to make sure that it's one dollar less than the dividing line
between felony theft and misdemeanor theft. And just walking right out. The employee at CVS is not supposed to stop them with physical force. A CVS, you know, understandably, CVS is like, well, no, we don't want our employees to be superheroes. We have insurance to help cover this, you know, we don't want one of our employees getting hurt or something. We're trying to, you know, physically restrain someone who's just stealing stuff. That
was because of Chase A Budin. That was because of Chase A Budin enacting the Soros ideology that African Americans are incarcerat at disproportionate rates and therefore the enforcement of criminal law for things like petty theft is just punishing people for being poor, punishing persons of color and communities of color for their poverty, the result of systemic racism, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So George Soros has this massive impact on America. Elon Musk has way more
money than George Soros, unfathomably more. And the thought was, well, if Donald Trump can reel in this fish and have him be part of the conservative coalition going forward, Holy smokes, you think George Soros was influential, you think the Koch brothers were influential, All these different figures on the left and the right that have set up enormous networks of super packs five on C four's five on C three's interconnected webs of different kinds of organizations that influence policy
with think tanks, influence issue advocacy with five oh one C four's issue they impact political campaigns through super pac spending. If you think Leonard Leo is influential, if you think the Koch brothers are influential, if you think George Soros is influential, if you think Bill Gates is influential, Elon's got more money than all of them. And I had
thought that this could be the most significant. One of the most significant outcomes of the twenty twenty four election was Elon Musk becoming a major political player, a major player in American politics. Well, maybe he still will be, but he's not going to be that for this iteration of Trump and this iteration of the Republican Congress, Trump and Elon engaged in a bitter war of words based on Elon's distaste with the OBBB as I call it, the One Big Beautiful Bill Elon thinks it's adding to
the deficits, adding to the debt, it's financially irresponsible. He thinks it's I mean, the way he characterized it was that it's revolting, it's horrible, and he then proceeds to jump into bitter, vindictive blasting of Trump, you know, saying that Trump is in the Epstein files and that's why the Epstein files weren't fully released. Now. In fairness, Trump is mentioned in the publicly known Epstein files as having had had some kind of interaction with Epstein way in
the past. It wasn't particularly damning. But you know, it's Elon kind of saying, well, I mean, Elon is very much implying that Donald Trump is involved in the Epstein stuff in a way that's much more insidious than what is publicly known, which I doubt is true. I feel like Elon is kind of making that up. I mean, I guess I'm open to believe whatever, but I just don't. I mean, this is part of my skepticism about the Epstein files in general. I just don't think there's any
there there with the Epstein files. I think we're gonna keep talking about the Epstein file that reluse to Epstein files. I just don't think there is any smoking gun within the Epstein files, let alone a smoking gun about Donald Trump. And I think Elon is just going off of the fact that Trump is mentioned in the publicly known Epstein files and just wants to say something mean to Trump because he's upset. Now the the what is the dispute?
The problem is I kind of see both sides of the dispute, and I can see the reason behind both sides, But the divorce is bad, and it's clear that I honestly, I think Trump is probably the more reasonable person in this whole dispute. Elon's not wrong. Yeah, it's fiscally irresponsible, and there are aspects of the OBBB, as I call it, that I think are terribly financially irresponsible. I think extending the salt deductions, increasing the amount of state and local
taxes that people can deduct is unbelievably stupid. It is a tax cut for rich people in blue states. That's what it is. It is a tax cut for rich people in New York and California. If you increase the amount of state and local taxes that you're able to
deduct from your federal income tax burden. What you're basically saying is that the stuff the federal government pays for should be shouldered more so by people who live in red, low tax states who don't have a very high state and local tax deduction a burden, so they won't be able to take advantage of any salt deduction because they don't have income taxes. If you're if you live in Florida,
you know, okay, I have to pay my federal income taxes. Well, I don't have much in state and local taxes to deduct. Florida doesn't have an income tax. Florida's thinking about eliminating property taxes. So it's basically the salt deduction is we're gonna gather less revenue, which increases the deficit, and it's basically shifting the burden of the federal budget onto red states away from blue states. It's idiotic. There's way more that we need to do to medicare, and the fundamental
problem this is the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem with the One Big Beautiful Bill is it's not really touching entitlement programs, and at some point someone needs to do something to address entitlement programs. Medicare, Social Security, Medicare. It does a little bit to means test Medicaid, maybe to limit Medicaid eligibility for able bodied people who aren't working other than the and the left is going to have
an absolute cow over it. And there are Republicans in the House who may very well lose their seats because they vote for it, like David Valadeo, because they have a high number of medical beneficiaries. And you're already starting to see political advertising against Valadeo for voting for this. So they barely do anything to touch Medicaid, and people are going to lose their seats, and the Left's gonna
have a cow. So I'm not disagreeing with Elon. I'm not disagreeing with Thomas Massey that this is a problematic piece of legislation fiscally in a number of respects. And I also think it's the best thing they could possibly you do at the moment given the makeup of Congress right now. And that's the problem. Their majority in the House is so so narrow. They passed the OBBB by like two votes. It was like two fifteen to two thirteen or some ridiculously narrow margin like that. They have
no wiggle room in the House. They have to listen to practically everybody. And it's Thomas Massey, the Republican House member from Kentucky who's kind of out on his own, who's a real fiscal the only like real fiscal hawk who's like, I will not vote for this. And Massy's not wrong, it's it's irresponsible. But also, I mean, if we want to enact any other part of Trump's agenda, especially funding for border security measures and things like that,
this is the best we can do. It just is like, why do we have the salt deduction because a bunch of Republicans from New York, the few Republican House members from New York who could sink the whole bill if they jump ship, the bill's not passing again because they have a two vote narrow majority. If Republicans had a twenty vote majority in the House, if they had a thirty vote majority in the House, which they have had at different points in the not so distant past, then
sure they wouldn't have to listen to them. They could pass something that didn't include the salt deduction, which is what they did in twenty seventeen. They limited the salt deduction, and Republicans from New York have been bellyaching about it ever since, as have been Democrats from New York like Chuck Schumer. Chuck Schumer well to the epitome of the phony Bologney liberal who really likes money and being comfortable,
you know, Chuck Schumer. Yes, Liberalism, the political movement of the little guy Schumer who's made reinstating the salt deduction, you know, the great civil rights movement of our time. Anyway, But we have to listen to those Republicans because the majority is so narrow, we have to listen to them. So in short, I mean I just think I definitely
I can see both sides, all right. I see Trump's perspective that listen, I have a two year window where I'm going to have a Republican majority in the House and a Republican majority in the Senate. It is almost certain that Republicans are going to lose the House in twenty twenty six. I mean there's you know, every off year cycle, usually it winds up bad for the party that's in power. And even if Republicans only lose two or three seats, which would be a massive upset for
the Republicans, they're going to lose the House. They probably won't lose the Senate, but they're definitely losing the House. Guaranteed, if they lose the House, they won't be able to pass another reconciliation bill. And you know, really, so they have one shot at this. They can do one reconciliation bill this one time when they have a majority in the Senate. They have a majority in the House, the reconciliation bill. The benefit of it is you don't need
the sixty vote threshold in the Senate. They have one shot at this, and that's it. So I you know, I completely see both sides perspectives. And I mean, Trump's certainly not going to back down. And Elon has enough money. He's got you know what some people call screw you money where he's so rich he has the ability to tell even the President of the United States to go sc through himself, because but yeah, what's gonna happen to me. I'm still gonna be a billionaire the next morning when
I wake up when we return. One comment Elon made that I thought was very interesting about whom Republicans should want to please. That is next on the John Girardi Show. In the Trump and Elon Holy War debate that took place on Twitter and truth Social yesterday, which this is why Trump needs to come back to Twitter. It's like they're communicating from competing social media platforms, which has been ridiculous. Elon made one point that I thought was very significant
and deserves some notice. One of the things he made was Trump's gonna be around for only the next four years. I'm gonna be around for the next forty years. Choose wisely. It's a thing to think about. As I said in the first segment, I had believed prior to the breakup we're now seeing, I had believed that one of the most significant outcomes of the twenty twenty four election, beyond Trump's victory itself, was Elon Musk entering the arena of
American politics. If Elon becomes this mainstay, I mean, he has the money and thereby the potential to have as much of an impact on American politics as George Soros, as the Koch Brothers, as Leonard Leo is having as anybody. I mean, the ways in which entities like the Koch Brothers or George Soros set up enormous interconnected networks of different kinds of five to one C three five one
C four and pack organizations. Pack organisations to directly influence elections, five on one C four's to directly influence legislation, and then five on one C three is to develop policy, think tanks, education movements, et cetera. Elon has the capacity to fund stuff like that, you know, ten times greater than anything Charles Koch ever did, ten times greater than anything George Soros ever did, because he's got ten times
more money. And it makes me wonder. You know, Elon had this one tweet where he said, you know, people should remember Trump's only going to be around for four years. I'm going to be around for another forty. And I wonder about this, Like I have not been an unqualified fanboy of Elon Musk. I think there's stuff he likes and believes in, stuff that he's pushed Trump towards that I am not as crazy about. And I think we have to take his sort of advocacy always with a
bit of a grain of salt. But it seems to me that he still wants to be some kind of a player, and I think he has realized that Trump is not going to be quite the vehicle for his viewpoints that he thought. And it makes me wonder, is there going to arise maybe in twenty twenty eight a candidate who will be the Elon candidate? Is it JD Vance? I mean, Elon tweeted the thing saying he wanted Trump to be impeached and removed and for Jadvance to become president,
which is kind of ridiculous. You know, we've been down the impeachment road before. Maybe that person is JD Vance. I don't know. Vance was clearly sort of the darling of Peter Thiel and some of the tech crypto guys. He clearly is very interested in AI questions, and I'm sure Elon has interested in Maybe maybe he's the guy come twenty twenty eight, and maybe, you know, maybe Vance is able behind the scenes to kind of patch things up with Musk in time for the twenty twenty eight elections.
I don't know, but I thought that was just the most interesting comment from Musk, because again, nobody has more potential, because nobody has more money to influence American politics like Elon does. So I'm gonna follow that aspect of things very carefully, all Right, when we return. President Trump's plans to pull funding for high speed rail hits Fresno. That's
next on the John Girardi Show. So the Trump administration under Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that basically, we are threatening to pull four billion dollars in federal funds that are earmarked for the California High Speed Rail project. And Secretary Duffy said the state quote has no viable path to complete this project on time or on budget. And Wednesday letter to the California High Speed Rail Authority. The lengthy reports of the rail project has been rife with
quote delays, mismanagement, waste, and skyrocketing costs. Check check, check, and check President Donald Trump. This is from the president b story about it. President Donald Trump had signaled he would attempt to pull back financial support from the federal government toward the project, as he did during his first term, but the region's officials said the federal money is urgently needed to finish construction in the Central Valley. Yeah, of course it is. They don't want it to be finished
because the whole thing is a black hole. They don't have the money to finish even the portion they're working on anyway without those funds. Officials expressed concern about more delays as the project lumbers towards its anticipated launch in the Central Value by twenty thirty three. Good lord, twenty thirty three. Oh my gosh, we voted for the thing
in two thousand and eight. I don't think we thought it was a twenty five year timeline, and god knows, it's probably not going to be ready by twenty thirty three either. He doesn't understand the San Joaquin Valley or the legal challenges that have delayed this project. Instead, he is stalling progress and killing good paying jobs to score
political points, said Representative Jim Costa. This is such an absurd talking point that liberals, it's the only thing they have left for defending the high speed rail is that it creates jobs. Okay. I could start a government program of ditch digging, where you dig ditches and then you get the dirt and you refill the holes again, and I could create a ton of jobs with it. You know, we could give gameful employment. Every homeless person on the street.
Will give them a job diging the ditch, and they spend you know, the first four hours of the day digging. Then they take take an hour lunch break if you want. And then they spend four hours filling the hole again. And then they go home. Hey, what a wonderful government. And then we give them a salary, a forty hour work week, two weeks paid vacation, one week sick benefits. Hey,
we've created jobs. Baby, This is a job creation machine, my government program, the ditch digging and ditch filling program. What a wonderful idea, What a wonderful use of your taxpayer dollars to help, you know, help create jobs. This is great. Okay, job creation for public works programs is wealth redistribution. It is an inefficient form of wealth redistribution that is not actually helping anything in the long term.
It's a waste of government money propping up the high speed rail project on the basis of, oh, it's creating jobs. That's pointless. It's pointless if the end result is not going to actually benefit the state in some way, shape or form. And the case for how high speed rail is actually going to benefit anything is terribly weak and getting weaker every year as more and more electric cars get on the road, As air travel develops more and
more and more. Okay, airports in California. Don't get smaller. It's pretty quick and easy and cheap to fly from LA to Sanfordsco. They're not making it more expend I mean, they're not making it more difficult. All right. Fresno's adding on another big old terminal. It's probably gonna expand our ability to move around in the state. I doubt it. It'll lead to fewer flights to Los Angeles, or to San Francisco, or to San Jose or to San Diego.
And again, with the proliferation of electric cars, here's California trying to do an electric vehicles mandate all electric cars by twenty thirty five. Illough the federal government has mixed up, but still that's what California wants. If all new car sales are electric by twenty thirty five, then where what do we do about the whole environmental motive behind the high speed rail. The environmental motive was the big motive.
One of the big pushing motives behind the high speed rail project was the environment The idea that if we have a high spa, fewer people will drive cars to get from LA to San Francisco or Fresno to LA or President to San Francisco, or or the highly trafficked route of Merced to Bakersfield. So that's the problem. All the Democrats who keep supporting the high speed rail to the bitter end to this day, in spite of everything,
in spite of cost overruns and corruption. And by the way, it's not just Republicans who have pointed out corruption, waste, overinflated costs, wasted money, poor planning, poor management, et cetera. The Los Angeles Times has covered it extensively. It's not just right wing nut jobs, you know, parroting talking points that they heard on I don't know, on Alex Jones
or something. Okay, mainstream reporting from very liberal, ordinarily liberal leaning outlets who've talked about these problems that the high speed rail has had. And for Jim Consert, well, Trump doesn't understand. Of course, he understands. He just disagrees with you. He doesn't think that. And by the way, the number of jobs that allegedly the high speed rail has created,
let's understand what it is. When they throw out a number, If it's something like I think it's around ten thousand or fifteen thousand, something like that, what they mean is it's workers for a year, a worker for a year, So if the same worker is still working on the high speed rail, a worker who is part of a construction entity that is contracted with who has a contract with the state for helping build a section of the
high speed rail. If that worker works on the high speed rail in twenty twenty four and then works on the high speed rail in twenty twenty five, the state then runs with, we created two jobs. Well, okay, First of all, these are contractors, not necessarily state employees, so the guy might have had a job already. Secondly, it's not like a new job is created every year, but they're sort of cumulatively stacking up those jobs year over year over year. That's how they get to.
This, Oh, we created ten thousand job fifty thousand jobs, which, by the way, if the number of jobs they created versus the amount of money they spent is also.
Wildly out of whack. If this is a job creation program, it's the most inefficient job creation program in human history. Seventeen years after voters approved the president Peace story goes on. Seventeen years after voters approve Proposition one A to fund California's high speed rail system, the project for means incomplete, delayed by changing construction costs and a series of lawsuits, all of which we could have and should have predicted.
Of course it was going to have enormous litigation surrounding it. You're doing eminent domain seizures from LA to San Francisco. Yeah, good luck getting through that without tons of lawsuits. You're also trying to do it in California, where the environmental reviews are absurd. Officials at the rail authority say the project, which aimed to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles via bullet trains by twenty twenty, expects to launch service from
Mercenda Bakersfield between twenty thirty and twenty thirty three. Like, how can you write that with a straight faith and not be like what a freaking disaster versaid to Bakersfield by twenty thirty, twenty thirty three, with no idea, no fathomable idea how to get from LA to San Francisco. I still have not read a solid description. Maybe it's out there and I just missed it. I don't know of how they intend to get over the grapevine. How do you get over the grapevine? We can't do it
right now with Amtrak. Okay, if you try to take amtrack from Fresno to La you know what you do? You get to I don't know where you get to Bakersfield or south of Bakersfield. You have to take a bus over the Grapevine and then you get on a train. Cause it's really hard to get over the Grapevine. How do you get through? Are are we gonna blast through the mountains? It's too steep to go, like over the mountains and down the hill into the San Juaquin Valley. Too steep for a train. So so what the heck
are we gonna do? It's unclear how the potential loss of federal funds would impact high speed rail construction in the Central Valley. Merced Mayor Matthews Dorado, So the federal government should not reverse its funding commitments regardless of changes in presidential administrations. Why I mean should the president should? Should the executive branch just not be responsive to you know, elections,
the will of the people. He supports a phased approach, starting with the Merced to Bakersfield line and expanding later there we go. High speed rail is probably the best way to travel, Serrato said, no, it's not. It's the mayor of Merced saying that the high high speed rail is probably the best way to travel by what possible metric. All Right, I'm in Fresno. I want to go to Bakersfield. Let me describe the process between high speed rail or
going in my car. If I want to go to Bakersfield, I get in my car, which is sitting in my drive I turn it on, I drive two hours and I'm in Bakersfield. While in Bakersfield, I even have the ability to go to multiple different places and sits with my own car, with the convenience of my own car. Because I have a car, it's my own car. It takes me two hours to get there. Sure, if I do the high speed rail, though, here's what I gotta do.
I've got to have someone. I've either got to drive my car to and leave it parked at a high speed rail station in downtown Fresno, or I need to arrange with a friend to drop me off, or I need to call an uber to drive me and drop me off at the train station. I then take the train, which is likely going to be faster, although I don't know if it's going to make stops in between. I would assume it's going to be faster than driving in
my car, but how fast an hour? I mean? Let's also note, if I'm going to take the train, I probably need to get to the station at least thirty minutes in advance. So that means to get from my house to downtown Fresno, I probably need to leave like fifty minutes before the train gets there. So even if the train is you know, an hour to get too from Fresno to Bakersfield, well, I still have to leave
fifty minutes before the train leaves to drive there. From Clovise to downtown Fresno, making my total travel time essentially the same. And then I wind up, so you know, I gotta take twenty minutes to get from close to downtown Fresno. I gotta get there, you know, a good half hour in advance, so that I don't miss the train. I get on the train, I'm on the train for an hour. It's about an hour and fifty minutes. I
maybe save ten minutes. Then I'm in Bakersfield, and guess what, I still got to get to wherever my final destination is. Because my final destination was not the train station. So how do I do that? Well, hopefully it's destination's right near the train station, I can walk there, but probably not. I then have to call an uber and pay for that and the cost of all of these things. Although gas prices are ridiculously high, the cost of these things
is maybe higher than the cost of gas. So it's undeniably a worse way of transportation than taking a car by I mean, other than environmental impact, although if I've got a hybrid or you know, an electric car, then no, not necessarily worse Fresno. Now, when we return, we'll hear what Jerry Dyer has to say about all this. Poor Jerry Dyer, I genuinely feel for it. He's like the one person who kind of wants high speed rail that I sort of feel some sympathy for. And I'll explain
why that's next on the John Girardi Show. Jerry Dyer, I think, is the last Republican left in Fresno who thinks high speed rail is worth it. And I think it's because Fresno is already all the way in. Fresno has sort of patterned its whole plans around downtown development around a high speed rail station. Which I think is a terrible strategic mistake, but one that they're sort of committed to. Now. They're all in, so there's not much
they can do about it. So the news that the Trump administration is going to pull about four billion dollars in federal funding away from the high speed rail project is coming as a blow to Jerry Dyer. He writes. He said, the potential loss of federal funding for high speed rail raises concerns for the city, quote where this project plays a critical role in our future. High speed rail isn't just about transportation. It's about connecting Fresno's people
and economy to the rest of California. It represents jobs, growth, and long term opportunity for our Regent Dire said, I encourage the High Speed Rail Authority to take the necessary steps to address the findings and keep this transformative project moving forward. I mean, I sort of feel bad for Dire because again, he's in for a penny, in for
a pound. I mean, he's in his whole plan for downtown revitalization revolves around this high speed rail station that he wants to build, which I just feel like is not going to be utilized. I feel like it's a big, expensive idea, another kind of hair brained, expensive scheme for revitalizing downtown president that I just don't think is going to work. But he's in and he's now learning that the rugs getting pulled out from under him by the
Trump administration. So you know, I mean I sort of feel bad for him, and you know, to a certain extent, this card was dealt to him before he became mayor, but he certainly did nothing to course correct. So I mean, it's a bad situation. This. I just do not think this high speed rail thing is ever going to get done. And the idea that the city pinned all its hopes on downtown revitalization around a station, Yeah, it just seems
like such a bad idea that'll do it. John Dilready shows you next time on Power Talk