Latest / Normally / Normally Podcast: Trump’s Iran Ceasefire Chaos, Gilgo Beach Killer Twist & California’s $125B Rail Disaster

Transcript

Normally Podcast: Trump’s Iran Ceasefire Chaos, Gilgo Beach Killer Twist & California’s $125B Rail Disaster · Normally

0:07
Speaker 1: We are back normally, so which normally the names gets weird.
0:11
Speaker 2: I'm Mary, Cathyham, I'm Carol Markowitz, Barry Catherine. The news
0:15
Speaker 2: is freaking weird.
0:15
Speaker 1: That's freaking weird, man, it's weird.
0:18
Speaker 2: As we're recording this, there's a temporary ceasefire between Iran
0:24
Speaker 2: and the United States. It's supposed to apply to allies
0:28
Speaker 2: as well. Iran is already breaking it. We have no
0:32
Speaker 2: idea what's going to happen by the time this episode airs.
0:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, the information we do know is that Trump sent
0:40
Speaker 3: the truth social that said a civilization will die tonight,
0:45
Speaker 3: and a lot of people flipped out, and you and
0:49
Speaker 3: I thought, I feel like this is part of upping
0:52
Speaker 3: the anti so that he gets his negotiation on a
0:56
Speaker 3: different footing, which is usually what he's doing in these situations.
0:59
Speaker 3: I understand the part where you go, the President of
1:02
Speaker 3: the United States is tweeting this crazy stuff and it
1:05
Speaker 3: includes possible war crimes, and that's bad and that's not
1:08
Speaker 3: how we do things. And I'm scared that he might
1:10
Speaker 3: do it because cultivating a mad man theory means to
1:14
Speaker 3: some extent people worry that you might do the thing right.
1:17
Speaker 2: Right, right, Well, that's what makes it effective?
1:20
Speaker 1: Yes, so that part I understand.
1:23
Speaker 3: The part I don't understand is when he doesn't and
1:27
Speaker 3: achieves some sort of shift in negotiations and a ceasefire.
1:31
Speaker 3: The same people yeah saying Trump chickened out by not
1:36
Speaker 3: doing the war crimes and the genociding that they were
1:39
Speaker 3: worried about in the morning.
1:41
Speaker 1: That party do not understand.
1:43
Speaker 2: Right, if you are horrified by his you know, wiping
1:46
Speaker 2: out a civilization bluster, but then disappointed by the ceasefire,
1:51
Speaker 2: make it make sense, like which of these are you?
1:55
Speaker 1: I am confused.
1:56
Speaker 3: What we do know is that the deal was supposed
1:58
Speaker 3: to be a ceasefire, which is note Iran has violated
2:02
Speaker 3: continually since in the eighteen hours since this went into
2:05
Speaker 3: effect or what have you, in all directions to UAE others,
2:13
Speaker 3: and so presumably they're not going to be putting up
2:17
Speaker 3: with that.
2:18
Speaker 1: We'll see what Trump says. The straight or form US
2:20
Speaker 1: is supposed to be open.
2:21
Speaker 3: But it's not, and Iran is blaming that on Israel
2:24
Speaker 3: hitting Hesbola in Lebanon, to which Trump said they weren't
2:28
Speaker 3: part of the ceasefire.
2:29
Speaker 1: Right, And there does seem.
2:32
Speaker 3: To be a lot of assumptions on the part of
2:34
Speaker 3: the media about what the ceasefire deal entails, alleging that
2:39
Speaker 3: Trump accepted on its face every one of Iran's things
2:43
Speaker 3: on a wish list. And I just don't buy that
2:46
Speaker 3: part of it.
2:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't understand who does. And again, I think
2:50
Speaker 2: it's so strange that you and I are in the
2:53
Speaker 2: position of defending Donald Trump as a person. It makes
2:58
Speaker 2: very little sense to me that you and I are
3:00
Speaker 2: understanding what he's doing, but his like alleged intense supporters,
3:06
Speaker 2: you know, the Tuckers of the world and those kind
3:09
Speaker 2: of people, are pretending that this is all completely brand
3:12
Speaker 2: new to him, like Tucker being offended on behalf of
3:16
Speaker 2: Muslims that Donald Trump said, you know, praise be to
3:20
Speaker 2: Allah in a sarcastic tone on Easter, like welcome, welcome, dude.
3:24
Speaker 2: He's been president, you know, we're into his sixth year
3:27
Speaker 2: of his presidency, four years in between where he was
3:31
Speaker 2: still in the national conversation daily. If any of this
3:35
Speaker 2: is surprising to you, I don't understand, and I don't know.
3:39
Speaker 2: I also think that if this I had no illusion
3:43
Speaker 2: that the ceasefire will hold. I mean, you know, maybe
3:46
Speaker 2: it will. Maybe we go to this runs tomorrow. Maybe
3:49
Speaker 2: Iran and Trump figure out a way to really have
3:53
Speaker 2: the ceasefire hold. I kind of don't think so, because, again,
3:57
Speaker 2: in my reading of Donald Trump is he's not going
3:59
Speaker 2: to accept the strait of her moves being blocked. And
4:02
Speaker 2: as we're recording this, Fox News is reporting that they
4:04
Speaker 2: have blocked two ships from the strait. Kuwait was reporting
4:08
Speaker 2: there under attack. Cluster bombs landed in Israel yesterday. So
4:11
Speaker 2: all of this says to me that this ceasefire is
4:15
Speaker 2: not going to hold. But if it were to hold,
4:18
Speaker 2: I'd be happy about that. I would feel good about that.
4:22
Speaker 2: I don't want a long war. I don't want war
4:24
Speaker 2: to go on, and I think we've achieved a lot
4:27
Speaker 2: of our objective. So let me redo two tweets that
4:30
Speaker 2: kind of summarize what I'm thinking about this. Arman Rosen tweets.
4:33
Speaker 2: If this ceasefire winds up happening, the bold Iranian gambit
4:37
Speaker 2: to trade much of their senior leadership, most of their navy,
4:39
Speaker 2: at least half their missile launchers, the lives of thousands
4:42
Speaker 2: of security personnel, various bridges and rail lines, steal in
4:45
Speaker 2: petrochemical plants, their deterrens, their nuclear infrastructure, their air defenses,
4:49
Speaker 2: and the ability to use Dubai as a sanctions of
4:52
Speaker 2: Asian's hub for the possibility of charging tolls for merchants
4:55
Speaker 2: shipping on the Strait of her MOUs will have been
4:57
Speaker 2: a titanic failure. I don't even I think they're going
5:00
Speaker 2: to get the tolls on the Strait of Hormuz. But
5:03
Speaker 2: you know, let's say, let's say that's where we wind up.
5:06
Speaker 2: How is that not a win for us?
5:08
Speaker 3: And it's also don't get it. It's also two weeks
5:11
Speaker 3: of ceasefire and negotiation.
5:12
Speaker 1: For a maybe right, right right.
5:14
Speaker 3: I don't like the way Trump is talking about like, yeah,
5:16
Speaker 3: we're just going to do business with them and we'll
5:18
Speaker 3: split the tolls.
5:19
Speaker 1: And it's like, okay, please, I.
5:20
Speaker 2: Can't believe any of that. I just feel like it's
5:22
Speaker 2: all right, it's all just words that he's saying to
5:25
Speaker 2: get what he wants. But yeah, I don't believe it.
5:27
Speaker 1: I'm of two minds about this.
5:29
Speaker 3: I do think there's concern that once you have stopped
5:33
Speaker 3: that the political costs at home of continuing goes up. Right,
5:38
Speaker 3: So if you need to resume, as I think you do,
5:41
Speaker 3: after Iran has violated. That becomes a harder political question
5:46
Speaker 3: for Donald Trump. Now we can talk more broadly about
5:49
Speaker 3: our relatively low tolerance for these things and why that
5:53
Speaker 3: matters on the world scene. I think, you know, it's
5:56
Speaker 3: well earned after twenty years of war, wearyness, understandable to
6:00
Speaker 3: stand withdrawal being horrific as a sort of exclamation point
6:05
Speaker 3: on that period of time. I think the remedy for
6:07
Speaker 3: that is to decisively win a war, and this seems
6:11
Speaker 3: like one that is tactically going well. I just don't
6:15
Speaker 3: know what the strategy is from here, nor do a
6:18
Speaker 3: lot of people, right, and that's part of what Trump does.
6:22
Speaker 1: So I am a little concerned that restarting will be difficult.
6:26
Speaker 3: That the market responding so well to the news that
6:29
Speaker 3: hermus will be open makes Trump go great, it's right, right,
6:35
Speaker 3: So we'll see how he reacts to that. But I
6:38
Speaker 3: think you're right that a lot of people with when
6:41
Speaker 3: it's Trump, they just forget. They're like, oh, we're at
6:45
Speaker 3: status quo ante, And I'm like, I don't think we're
6:48
Speaker 3: at status quo ante. As Eli Lake puts it, in
6:52
Speaker 3: five weeks of war, the regime has lost its navy,
6:54
Speaker 3: most of its missile launchers and a good chunk of
6:56
Speaker 3: its defense industrial base, along with the top tier of
6:58
Speaker 3: its political and military leadership. Add to this the damage
7:01
Speaker 3: already done to its nuclear program in last June's twelve
7:04
Speaker 3: Day war. There are more than nine hundred pounds of
7:06
Speaker 3: uranium buried under the rubble of what used to be
7:08
Speaker 3: underground in Richmond facilities. A year ago, Iran was on
7:11
Speaker 3: the brink of obtaining a nuclear weapon and the ballistic
7:13
Speaker 3: missiles to deliver it as far as Europe. Today, the
7:16
Speaker 3: regimes military has been reduced to a shell of itself.
7:19
Speaker 3: That doesn't mean a clear win maybe in many people's
7:23
Speaker 3: minds in America, which is something Trump needs to deal
7:25
Speaker 3: with and a message of sense, but that's a big
7:28
Speaker 3: will and it makes it also Commanie's dead, by the way, Yeah,
7:33
Speaker 3: And it makes it much harder for them to reach
7:38
Speaker 3: outside of Iran to terrorize people.
7:41
Speaker 2: Absolutely, that's such a big thing. The fact that they
7:44
Speaker 2: have lost so much influence is humongous. And I was
7:47
Speaker 2: going to read a very similar comment from David Hersiani
7:50
Speaker 2: who also sums up all the things that they've lost,
7:52
Speaker 2: and I just again, you can hate Donald Trump, you
7:57
Speaker 2: can hate this war you can hate Warren General, you
7:59
Speaker 2: can hate all of it, but to say that America
8:02
Speaker 2: didn't get anything out of these last few weeks is crazy.
8:06
Speaker 2: It's absolutely crazy. And we got to like see what
8:09
Speaker 2: our capabilities are on the world stage. It's it's been
8:13
Speaker 2: breathtaking to watch. And again, you could oppose all of
8:16
Speaker 2: this and still say, wow, we won this. I don't
8:20
Speaker 2: understand how you look at it in another sense.
8:22
Speaker 3: Well, you've also seen the Gulf States rally with both
8:27
Speaker 3: America and notably Israel. Yep, that's a big deal. They
8:32
Speaker 3: have shifted those alliances against themselves, Aaron has by their
8:36
Speaker 3: behavior during this. Yeah.
8:38
Speaker 1: And then China and Russia have sort of barely lifted
8:41
Speaker 1: a finger. Now there is a question during this ceasefire
8:44
Speaker 1: whether Russia and China start shipping stuff in to make
8:47
Speaker 1: it easier for them to learn and adapt and do
8:50
Speaker 1: new things. But by the way, by the way, they
8:55
Speaker 1: had a lot of time to prepare for this war.
8:57
Speaker 1: There was like decades where they were preparing for as.
9:00
Speaker 2: Well, or even the months in advance where Trump was like,
9:02
Speaker 2: I'm going to attack you. I'm going to attack you.
9:06
Speaker 2: I don't see it. Only because Russia needs its own
9:09
Speaker 2: supplies for their ongoing war in Ukraine. China seems like,
9:13
Speaker 2: why did we back these losers? They really don't seem like, oh,
9:17
Speaker 2: we're on this side.
9:18
Speaker 1: They're very very quiet.
9:20
Speaker 2: They're not blustery at all, and that's a tell. I mean,
9:24
Speaker 2: I don't know again how to look at it and anything, but.
9:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, we will see where it goes. Like it could
9:30
Speaker 1: all change within eighteen hours. But this is what we
9:34
Speaker 1: this is what we know thus far. And I'm with you.
9:38
Speaker 3: I'm with you, and that people discount what has already happened.
9:43
Speaker 3: And also, I think the cost of Trump being unconventional
9:47
Speaker 3: and not clearly communicating this is what I want to
9:49
Speaker 3: achieve means that And because he likes to declare that
9:53
Speaker 3: anything is the thing he wanted to achieve, means that
9:57
Speaker 3: voters are going to be like, but what's the thing
9:59
Speaker 3: that we achieved?
9:59
Speaker 2: Right?
10:00
Speaker 3: People who don't follow this all the time are going
10:02
Speaker 3: to need to be messaged and clearly told that, and
10:05
Speaker 3: he has missed opportunities to do that.
10:07
Speaker 1: Even though he does talk about it, he doesn't talked
10:09
Speaker 1: about it in the sort of traditional presidential way.
10:13
Speaker 2: I agree, I think, and either of the tweets that
10:15
Speaker 2: you and I read sum up a lot of the
10:17
Speaker 2: success that we've had. And Donald Trump can say that
10:21
Speaker 2: to the American people and mean it because it's true.
10:24
Speaker 2: Another tweet I enjoyed from Klay Travis, he says, yesterday,
10:28
Speaker 2: many experts, that's in quotes, experts told you we were
10:31
Speaker 2: headed for nuclear war and spent the entire day losing
10:34
Speaker 2: their minds. Today the Dow opens up up three hundred points,
10:38
Speaker 2: SMP rises nearly three percent, and oil has dropped to
10:41
Speaker 2: twenty dollars dropped twenty dollars a barrel. As always, it
10:44
Speaker 2: pays to be rational. Congrats to those who didn't lose
10:47
Speaker 2: their minds. This goes back to what we talk about
10:49
Speaker 2: a lot, which is we would be the same people
10:52
Speaker 2: we are if this was Joe Biden. And if you're
10:55
Speaker 2: not the same person you are, if you don't have
10:57
Speaker 2: the same beliefs, if you're Bill Chris, that's a problem.
11:02
Speaker 3: I mean, the thing where you're afraid of genocide and
11:06
Speaker 3: the destruction of a civilization at nine am and by
11:10
Speaker 3: seven pm you're like.
11:12
Speaker 1: What a wuss? Yeah, Taco, No, that's a note for me.
11:16
Speaker 1: That's a note for me that that gear shift I
11:19
Speaker 1: can't do.
11:20
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's crazy. Also, Adam Francisco points out that gas
11:24
Speaker 2: prices collapsed and CNN removed the grass price graphic from
11:28
Speaker 2: their homepage, because of course they did.
11:32
Speaker 1: We're going to take a short break.
11:33
Speaker 2: And be right back with more on Normally. We are
11:39
Speaker 2: back on Normally. Where a case that has really.
11:43
Speaker 1: Gripped New York.
11:44
Speaker 2: I mean, it was years and years of bodies piling
11:48
Speaker 2: up near Gilgel Beach on Long Island. It was I'm
11:52
Speaker 2: not a super murdery person, but it was a huge,
11:56
Speaker 2: huge story for a long time.
11:58
Speaker 1: Sorry, I don't mean to make life. It's just I
12:00
Speaker 1: don't know it. It is correct.
12:02
Speaker 2: A lot of women are into the murdering, and I
12:05
Speaker 2: do not consider myself one of those. I mean, I
12:07
Speaker 2: enjoyed the occasional Law and Order episode, but.
12:09
Speaker 3: Well, there are a lot of women who are into
12:10
Speaker 3: the murdering literally and into into the storytelling about the yes,
12:16
Speaker 3: I meant the latter.
12:17
Speaker 1: Yes.
12:18
Speaker 2: So here's the story of what happened with the Gilgo murderers,
12:21
Speaker 2: because I'm so fascinated by this. So a woman goes missing,
12:25
Speaker 2: and when you read the story of this woman going missing,
12:27
Speaker 2: she's like she was I believe a sex worker and
12:30
Speaker 2: she was knocking on doors. She had a driver waiting
12:33
Speaker 2: for her. She was like hysterical. She appeared like somebody
12:36
Speaker 2: was chasing her. Turns out that that woman might not
12:41
Speaker 2: even be involved in any of this, Like she was
12:43
Speaker 2: ultimately found. Yeah, her body was ultimately found, but it
12:47
Speaker 2: appears that she died accidentally and is not related to
12:50
Speaker 2: this case. But as they start looking for this woman,
12:53
Speaker 2: they just find body after body after body after body,
12:57
Speaker 2: and so far. He the man who was arrested for
13:01
Speaker 2: rex Herman, he was maintaining his innocence for a long
13:05
Speaker 2: long time, and then today Wednesday, he is due to
13:08
Speaker 2: plead guilty in court, which is a big shift because
13:12
Speaker 2: he's been saying the whole time he had nothing to
13:13
Speaker 2: do with it. He was previously charged with seven murders
13:19
Speaker 2: and not the woman again, not the woman that went missing.
13:22
Speaker 2: He's now going to admit to an eighth murder that
13:26
Speaker 2: was one of the bodies found but wasn't tied to
13:28
Speaker 2: him originally, And now at least three more corpses are
13:32
Speaker 2: not tied to him. An Asian man, a woman and
13:35
Speaker 2: her child were found during these searches, and it appears
13:39
Speaker 2: that they are not part of his murder spree, which
13:42
Speaker 2: leads to the question of what in the hell is
13:44
Speaker 2: going on in the sleepy Long Island Like the cutest
13:48
Speaker 2: little area gilgol Beach. You would never think, oh, oh,
13:51
Speaker 2: let's just go find bodies in the water. So yeah,
13:56
Speaker 2: And the case of how they found this guy was
14:00
Speaker 2: very interesting. He was an architect and they somehow tied
14:04
Speaker 2: him to the first murder and ended up finding finding
14:08
Speaker 2: him eating a pizza on the street of Manhattan. He
14:11
Speaker 2: dumps the pizza in a garbage can, they test the crust.
14:15
Speaker 2: They tie him to the rest of us. So it's
14:18
Speaker 2: really interesting, and it's it's bizarre, and it will make
14:23
Speaker 2: every murder story look, you know, bland in comparison, especially
14:27
Speaker 2: because again there are at least three more unsolved murders
14:30
Speaker 2: that have not so far been tied to him. It's
14:35
Speaker 2: it's been a long time coming for New York to
14:38
Speaker 2: get to the end of the story, and him pleading
14:41
Speaker 2: guilty today will be at least part part of the
14:44
Speaker 2: way towards that.
14:45
Speaker 3: Now, Alvin Bragg is not dealing with the plea deal, right,
14:48
Speaker 3: because that'll be like two and a half weeks.
14:51
Speaker 1: No, no, I don't want to avoid that.
14:53
Speaker 3: No. I am also not super murdery. I occasionally do
14:58
Speaker 3: like true crime. I find that it's like generally too
15:03
Speaker 3: dark for me. And I never am a person who
15:06
Speaker 3: follows cases while they happen, which is a funny thing
15:09
Speaker 3: because I know that's the breaking news, right. I don't
15:11
Speaker 3: do that in crime cases. I only watch the documentary
15:16
Speaker 3: after the fact, maybe because there's distance or something. But yes,
15:21
Speaker 3: it's serial killers are, for whatever reason, endlessly fascinating. I mean,
15:26
Speaker 3: many people are fascinated by them. There is good news
15:28
Speaker 3: by the way that active sal serial killers went from like, yes,
15:32
Speaker 3: I have been seven hundred in the.
15:34
Speaker 1: Eighties to like one hundred. Now we've really cut down.
15:38
Speaker 3: On our national supply of serial killers, and that's good
15:41
Speaker 3: news for us.
15:42
Speaker 2: It's just much harder, right, it's the cameras everywhere, everything
15:46
Speaker 2: is testable. I mean again, this guy is just like
15:49
Speaker 2: eating his pizza on the streets of Manhattan, dumps in
15:51
Speaker 2: a garbage can, and now he's charged with eight murders.
15:54
Speaker 1: Like it's I mean, that's good police.
15:56
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it's excellent for those of us not committing murders.
15:59
Speaker 2: And this is why I think the murdering has gone down.
16:04
Speaker 1: It is.
16:04
Speaker 2: This is like a ten year running story in New York,
16:08
Speaker 2: so a lot of New Yorkers are super invested in
16:10
Speaker 2: this to see how it turns out. There's been also
16:14
Speaker 2: in the articles about this, like he was not willing
16:17
Speaker 2: to settle this case at all. He was and people
16:20
Speaker 2: were like, do they have the wrong guy? Like it
16:22
Speaker 2: was really touch and go because he was so adamant
16:25
Speaker 2: that he didn't do it, and now he's saying that
16:28
Speaker 2: he did do it. So we'll see what happens. There's
16:33
Speaker 2: a three part documentary I haven't seen it, but apparently
16:36
Speaker 2: people love it, The gilgol Beach Killer House of Secrets.
16:39
Speaker 2: His family's on the record, his wife has left him.
16:42
Speaker 2: I mean, apparently being a serial killer is not good
16:45
Speaker 2: for your marriage.
16:45
Speaker 1: Guys. Yeah, I will probably watch that at some point.
16:49
Speaker 3: I do also, just on this dark subject and if
16:53
Speaker 3: you want a good serial killer story that has a
16:55
Speaker 3: lot of distance, the book The Devil in the White
16:58
Speaker 3: City by.
17:00
Speaker 1: Which Eric Larson.
17:02
Speaker 3: It is about a serial killer during the eighteen ninety
17:05
Speaker 3: three Chicago World's Fair who basically kept the equivalent of
17:11
Speaker 3: an Airbnb at the time, and young women came to
17:14
Speaker 3: stay in this house that he had built into sort
17:17
Speaker 3: of a house of horrors.
17:18
Speaker 1: And it is a.
17:19
Speaker 3: Great historical account not only of that who is. It's
17:22
Speaker 3: an incredible story, and I won't spoil any of it
17:24
Speaker 3: for you because it has so many twists and turns.
17:27
Speaker 3: But also I got the sense that this guy maybe
17:29
Speaker 3: just wanted to write a story about the Chicago World's
17:31
Speaker 3: Fair and needed a hook for it because there's so
17:34
Speaker 3: much historical information about that huge event in American history.
17:40
Speaker 1: So it's a great read. He's a great writer, and
17:42
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed it. This isn't about murder.
17:45
Speaker 2: But we started watching Ley Miz last night as a family.
17:49
Speaker 2: I've never seen it before. Like, I had no idea
17:51
Speaker 2: what it was about, Like the whole early prostitution scenes.
17:54
Speaker 2: I was like kids, you know, blocking their faces. I
17:56
Speaker 2: did not know. But anyway, my middle son, who's really
18:00
Speaker 2: into history, was like, there's no way they pursued this,
18:03
Speaker 2: you know, bread thief for six years trying to find
18:06
Speaker 2: him after he was out on parole. He said they
18:08
Speaker 2: stopped looking for Jack the Ripper after three months and
18:11
Speaker 2: they were just like, that's it, no more of this.
18:13
Speaker 2: And so he doesn't buy that they spent you know,
18:15
Speaker 2: years and years looking for the bread thief right across
18:18
Speaker 2: the water in France.
18:21
Speaker 1: Do you like Lamuz?
18:23
Speaker 3: I do like Limaz. I don't think I've ever seen
18:25
Speaker 3: it on stage, though I should. My husband knows a
18:27
Speaker 3: lot about Lemez because his mom took him to see
18:30
Speaker 3: it one time, and it was after like a twelve
18:33
Speaker 3: hour overnight shift and he dozed a little bit during
18:36
Speaker 3: that play.
18:37
Speaker 1: I don't think I'm speaking out of school here.
18:38
Speaker 3: So what he did was he went and learned all
18:41
Speaker 3: the lyrics and then went back with his mom so
18:44
Speaker 3: that he could make up for that incident.
18:46
Speaker 1: Isn't that sweet? So he knows it very sweet, very
18:49
Speaker 1: very sweet. My kids are not into it, like at all.
18:51
Speaker 1: They're like, what are we watching? Why are they all singing?
18:54
Speaker 4: Like?
18:55
Speaker 1: Make them stop? Well, let them know that Steve likes it.
18:58
Speaker 1: I will for sure.
19:00
Speaker 2: All right, We're going to take a short break and
19:02
Speaker 2: be right back with slightly less murder on Normally. We
19:09
Speaker 2: are back on Normally, where California doesn't have enough money
19:14
Speaker 2: to finish the high speed rail system and they are
19:17
Speaker 2: a little bit short. It's only supposed to connect San
19:20
Speaker 2: Francisco to La and they just like, you know, misplaced
19:24
Speaker 2: one hundred and twenty five billion dollars if they need
19:27
Speaker 2: to complete it. Let's roll this clip from some California
19:32
Speaker 2: officials talking to CBS News about this small, small.
19:36
Speaker 4: Gap as we speak right now. Are the funds there
19:39
Speaker 4: to complete LA to San Francisco?
19:42
Speaker 2: The entire amount of money we need not there today,
19:45
Speaker 2: But do we believe we can get those funds to
19:49
Speaker 2: get the project done? Absolutely?
19:51
Speaker 4: How much do you estimate it's going to cost to
19:53
Speaker 4: connect high speed rail San Francisco LA today?
19:56
Speaker 5: We estimate, with the right optimization, just over one hundred
19:59
Speaker 5: and twenty five million dollars. I think one hundred and
20:01
Speaker 5: twenty six billion dollars is the current estimate for that.
20:04
Speaker 4: That's more funding than Amtrak has received in its history
20:07
Speaker 4: and still leads a shortfall of roughly ninety billion dollars.
20:11
Speaker 4: That's a big gap to fill.
20:13
Speaker 5: It is a big gap to fill, but again we
20:15
Speaker 5: have an understanding of how to get there and to
20:18
Speaker 5: fill that gap.
20:19
Speaker 2: Is it waiting for Donald Trump not to be president
20:22
Speaker 2: and getting the next Democrat to pay for it? Is
20:25
Speaker 2: that the way that they're going to fill that gap.
20:27
Speaker 2: I'll also just add that that one hundred and twenty
20:30
Speaker 2: five billion number is more than triple the original price
20:34
Speaker 2: tag that was approved by voters. So California is just
20:37
Speaker 2: doing super great with this.
20:38
Speaker 1: You know what, it's also more than Carol, I checked
20:40
Speaker 1: this yesterday.
20:42
Speaker 3: Do you know how much the Artemis program costs from
20:44
Speaker 3: twelve to getting to the dark side of the moon.
20:47
Speaker 1: It costs ninety three billion dollars to get to the
20:50
Speaker 1: dark side of the moon.
20:51
Speaker 2: Amazing, So getting from LA to San Francisco will cost more.
20:56
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Yeah, that is correct and probably longer.
21:00
Speaker 2: Right, is California just a fraud? I mean, it's like
21:05
Speaker 2: the fraud capital of America. I don't think that's even
21:08
Speaker 2: I don't think it's even debatable. But it's just a
21:10
Speaker 2: place where money goes to get completely misspent, right, misspent
21:16
Speaker 2: slash stolen.
21:17
Speaker 3: This is the thing about I mean, I've always been
21:20
Speaker 3: highly skeptical government programs, and they even outdo my sence.
21:24
Speaker 3: They really do ability to steal from people. And COVID,
21:27
Speaker 3: of course accelerated all of this. There's a great piece
21:31
Speaker 3: in the City Journal called Gavin Newsom's Empire Fraud, which
21:35
Speaker 3: they estimate Calvin has lost at least one hundred and
21:38
Speaker 3: eighty billion dollars to fraud obviously accelerated, said as I said,
21:43
Speaker 3: by these COVID programs.
21:46
Speaker 1: There was at least one expert at the time yelling
21:47
Speaker 1: at them like.
21:48
Speaker 3: Hey, this is going to be the biggest fraud in
21:49
Speaker 3: history if you take allsions off of unemployment, income and
21:54
Speaker 3: insurance and then do COVID and make it bigger. And
21:58
Speaker 3: sure enough, that's what happened. In one case, a Romanian
22:00
Speaker 3: led fraud ring orchestrated a five million dollar unemployment insurance
22:05
Speaker 3: scheme and they were just taking the money and wiring
22:08
Speaker 3: it straight to Romania, like we don't have a protection
22:11
Speaker 3: rate for that, and that's just a drop in the bucket.
22:15
Speaker 3: And one hundred and eighty billion is something that people
22:17
Speaker 3: have trouble even picturing. And it's being taken from people's
22:23
Speaker 3: pockets every day in California, more than the program to
22:27
Speaker 3: get to the Moon is being taken from the taxpayers
22:31
Speaker 3: of California, who then get what in services, zero miles
22:34
Speaker 3: of high speed rail, yeap, homeless people on many of
22:37
Speaker 3: their streets, infrastructure that does not work for them because
22:41
Speaker 3: it's being stolen.
22:43
Speaker 1: And Newsom is going to have to reckon with this
22:46
Speaker 1: record at some point no matter how high he is
22:49
Speaker 1: in the poll.
22:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. Will he have to reckon with this?
22:52
Speaker 2: I saw a tweet about this same study that you're
22:56
Speaker 2: talking about the unemployment numbers that at one point they
22:59
Speaker 2: had more people filing for unemployment than adults who live
23:03
Speaker 2: in California. So that seems like not great as we
23:08
Speaker 2: are going to, you know, record this. Christopher Ruffo, who
23:12
Speaker 2: was involved in breaking that incredible story. He tweets out
23:16
Speaker 2: a news story about California spending thirty billion dollars per
23:20
Speaker 2: year paying eight hundred thousand people to cook, clean, shop,
23:24
Speaker 2: and watch television with family members and others. This in
23:27
Speaker 2: home care program operates mostly on the honor system, which
23:31
Speaker 2: is how you know it's great, and loses six to
23:33
Speaker 2: twelve billion a year to fraud. I mean it's almost
23:37
Speaker 2: like a six to twelve billion doesn't even seem that
23:39
Speaker 2: much when you're talking about the numbers.
23:41
Speaker 3: The California loses well, And here's what these liberal governments do.
23:44
Speaker 3: These liberal state governments make giant promises and then they realize,
23:48
Speaker 3: oh crap, we just have to keep raising taxes, and
23:51
Speaker 3: then they get defrauded because when they make these giant
23:54
Speaker 3: promises in these new programs.
23:55
Speaker 1: They don't put protections in them.
23:57
Speaker 3: I think that's partly because they like funneling money to
23:59
Speaker 3: as many people as they can possibly funnel money too.
24:01
Speaker 3: And here's the important part for normies. If you don't
24:04
Speaker 3: live in one of these states, if you live in
24:06
Speaker 3: one of these states, you're already being defrauded. If you
24:08
Speaker 3: don't live in one of these states, what's going to
24:10
Speaker 3: happen is they're going to wait for a Democratic president
24:12
Speaker 3: and Democratic Congress, and then they're going to say, all
24:15
Speaker 3: of you pay for all this fraud. All of you
24:18
Speaker 3: pay for every gap in our budget. All of you
24:21
Speaker 3: who are trying to put your kids in dance classes
24:23
Speaker 3: and scrimping at the edges to buy gas, you pay
24:27
Speaker 3: for it.
24:28
Speaker 1: That's what's coming.
24:29
Speaker 3: That's the plan for Illinois, for Massachusetts, for California, that's
24:34
Speaker 3: the plan.
24:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, when they inevitably can't afford to pay their own bills,
24:39
Speaker 2: we're all going to be responsible for it. And the
24:42
Speaker 2: fact is that that is another thing the Republicans have
24:45
Speaker 2: to be running on. They have to be running on
24:47
Speaker 2: the fact that, yes, these frauds in these blue states,
24:50
Speaker 2: they're your problem too. And here's why I just okay,
24:54
Speaker 2: can we just take over messaging for the Republican Party?
24:57
Speaker 2: Like would that be too much to ask? I just
25:00
Speaker 2: where are they? What are they doing? It is perplexing
25:03
Speaker 2: to me that these stories are not being told in
25:07
Speaker 2: a fashion that you know, shows the American people how
25:11
Speaker 2: responsible they're going to end up being for all of this,
25:14
Speaker 2: and why it matters and who who is actually responsible
25:17
Speaker 2: and who should be blamed and how to get us
25:19
Speaker 2: out of this mess.
25:20
Speaker 1: Yeah, a tiny bright spot.
25:22
Speaker 3: By the way, Republicans did throw in some I believe
25:25
Speaker 3: nine million the other day into this Virginia redistricting.
25:28
Speaker 1: So there's life. There's life in the system.
25:30
Speaker 3: I fear that it's too little, too late because we
25:33
Speaker 3: are pretty close to the old election day right now
25:37
Speaker 3: and there's early voting throughout that time. But at least
25:41
Speaker 3: there's some fight in them and we will see what happens.
25:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought things were looking good for that or
25:45
Speaker 2: is it no longer?
25:46
Speaker 3: No, it was never looking good because for people that
25:49
Speaker 3: right Rogan seated the ground for a month, which I
25:53
Speaker 3: never understood. One of the successes they've had in Virginia
25:56
Speaker 3: was framing Spanberger as this liberal once she got into office,
26:00
Speaker 3: they were helped by the facts, but they did it aggressively,
26:03
Speaker 3: and then once the redistricting happened, they were like, I
26:05
Speaker 3: guess we'll stop talking for a while other than myself
26:08
Speaker 3: and a handful of us.
26:09
Speaker 1: But people seem to be re engaged.
26:11
Speaker 3: So maybe this almost even fight, we could fight to
26:14
Speaker 3: an almost win or a win.
26:17
Speaker 1: I'm not super optimistic. We'll see.
26:19
Speaker 2: All right, we're rooting for you guys from over here,
26:23
Speaker 2: and I hope that it works out. I don't know.
26:25
Speaker 2: I feel like I and the numbers I've seen have
26:28
Speaker 2: been good. I think I've told you. I have a
26:29
Speaker 2: polster friend who sends me stuff and he's never optimistic,
26:33
Speaker 2: but he's kind of optimistic on this, so we'll see.
26:36
Speaker 1: I hope that his view prevails.
26:40
Speaker 2: Well, we'll see about that. Thank you for joining us
26:43
Speaker 2: on Normally. Normally airs Tuesdays and Thursdays, and you can
26:46
Speaker 2: subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts. Get in touch with
26:49
Speaker 2: us at normally theepod at gmail dot com. Thanks for listening,
26:52
Speaker 2: and when things get weird, act normally