Latest / The Bill Handel Show / Trump’s Changes to the White House | The Louvre’s Stolen Goods
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: You're listening to bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
- 0:05Speaker 1: six forty. He's at your manus, guys, listening to the
- 0:10Speaker 1: bill Handle show.
- 0:15Speaker 2: KFI AM six forty bill Handle on a Thursday, October
- 0:19Speaker 2: twenty third, the twenty third day of the governmental shutdown.
- 0:24Speaker 2: And that is for many many hundreds of thousands of
- 0:29Speaker 2: federal employees, maybe millions, those paychecks are not coming in.
- 0:34Speaker 2: Friday is the next major paycheck, and that is going
- 0:38Speaker 2: to be cut.
- 0:39Speaker 1: I mean they're not going to receive it. Yeah.
- 0:42Speaker 2: By the way, coming up at eight eight o'clock this
- 0:44Speaker 2: morning is Joel Larsgard How to Money, which we do
- 0:48Speaker 2: every Thursday.
- 0:49Speaker 1: Okay.
- 0:50Speaker 2: In less than a year, the President has remade the
- 0:53Speaker 2: White House physically significantly. So the old office is now
- 0:58Speaker 2: decorated top bottom in gold. The President really enjoys gold.
- 1:04Speaker 2: The Rose Garden lawn is paved over.
- 1:08Speaker 1: Sorry about that. Let me get that. I'm silent. There
- 1:18Speaker 1: we are the rose gardens.
- 1:21Speaker 2: The grass area in front of the rose garden is
- 1:24Speaker 2: now paved over. And what the President did is he
- 1:27Speaker 2: put these tables with umbrellas that you could sit around.
- 1:32Speaker 2: He went to the Costco food court a few weeks
- 1:36Speaker 2: ago and decided that's a good idea. And of course
- 1:40Speaker 2: the big ballroom project is moving ahead.
- 1:44Speaker 1: So the big one is the East Wing.
- 1:46Speaker 2: Ballroom, and this is ninety thousand square feet, which is
- 1:51Speaker 2: going to virtually double the footprint of the White House itself.
- 1:56Speaker 2: And the President says it's necessary to host large event for.
- 1:59Speaker 1: World lead and there is no.
- 2:03Speaker 2: Venue that can hold that many people in the White House.
- 2:07Speaker 2: He said it was going to cost more than two
- 2:08Speaker 2: hundred million to build. Will hold nine hundred and ninety
- 2:11Speaker 2: nine people.
- 2:12Speaker 1: It won't.
- 2:13Speaker 2: It still will hold seven hundred change. And mister Trumps
- 2:17Speaker 2: said that personal contributions and private donations will cover the bill.
- 2:21Speaker 2: And I believe that not taxpayers are foreign contributors that
- 2:24Speaker 2: I yet. And the proposed design looks an awful light
- 2:30Speaker 2: a lot, an awful lot like the Grand Ballroom at
- 2:34Speaker 2: Trump's mar Alago, very very similar, and so big changes
- 2:41Speaker 2: are coming. So the rose garden, now, the rose garden
- 2:44Speaker 2: is a garden of roses.
- 2:46Speaker 1: But what it does.
- 2:48Speaker 2: The roses circle this green lawn where the reporters were
- 2:53Speaker 2: sitting usually and they set up chairs, and of course
- 2:56Speaker 2: they would scream at the president who gave press conferences
- 3:00Speaker 2: right there at the portico of the White House, so
- 3:03Speaker 2: that basically is done as a green area. Also, the
- 3:10Speaker 2: president recently hosted a dinner for Republican lawmakers and it
- 3:14Speaker 2: is now the Rose Garden Club where lawmakers Republicans can
- 3:20Speaker 2: hang out. You look at the Oval Office, portraits are
- 3:24Speaker 2: now framed in gold, the mirrors are framed in gold.
- 3:30Speaker 2: There's golden inlays, and the presidential seal of the office
- 3:34Speaker 2: is now covered in gold leaf.
- 3:38Speaker 1: Why not?
- 3:39Speaker 2: And the historic items from the White House collection and
- 3:42Speaker 2: the fireplace mantle all in gold. Now presidents make changes
- 3:49Speaker 2: to the Oval Office constantly. Every new president makes some change.
- 3:54Speaker 2: Usually they're pretty subtle. Even President Trump in his first
- 3:58Speaker 2: term made it pretty subtle. For example, the seal on
- 4:03Speaker 2: the floor, they put new carpeting down.
- 4:04Speaker 1: The seal is bigger or smaller.
- 4:07Speaker 2: The flags usually it's the American flag behind the president.
- 4:12Speaker 2: He has a dozen flags, not only the presidential seal,
- 4:17Speaker 2: the flag of America, but also flags from virtually every
- 4:21Speaker 2: Armed services branch that we have.
- 4:24Speaker 1: And I'll tell you what my favorite one is. Oh.
- 4:26Speaker 2: Also the cabinet room of course golden inlays and trump
- 4:31Speaker 2: and trim added to the walls, the mantle is decorated
- 4:35Speaker 2: with gold items. Now the fun one, the one I
- 4:39Speaker 2: like the absolute most is in September, the President unveiled
- 4:43Speaker 2: the Presidential Walk of Fame on the West Colonnade. That's
- 4:48Speaker 2: the main walkway between the residents and the West Wing.
- 4:52Speaker 2: We've often seen presidents walking down that colonnade Colonnade from
- 4:57Speaker 2: the residence to the Oval office, and that is iconic
- 5:03Speaker 2: and along that wall it used to be basically a wall.
- 5:09Speaker 2: What the President has done, which I think is pretty neat,
- 5:12Speaker 2: is he has put portraits of every single president in
- 5:17Speaker 2: chronological order, framed of course in gold, and gold inlays
- 5:21Speaker 2: above the portraits and they go right across of all
- 5:25Speaker 2: the presidents except Joe Biden's portrait. There isn't a portrait
- 5:32Speaker 2: of Joe Biden. There is a photograph of an auto
- 5:36Speaker 2: pen that President Biden is accused of, rightly so, of
- 5:43Speaker 2: signing his name and it's his signature.
- 5:45Speaker 1: But it's done.
- 5:46Speaker 2: It's a device that signs his signature thirteen fifteen times.
- 5:51Speaker 2: Looks like a ru Goldberg device that virtually every president
- 5:57Speaker 2: has used. The President not only signs major pieces of
- 6:01Speaker 2: legislation and executive order. I mean he signs stuff declarations
- 6:07Speaker 2: that Congress has passed, for example, pardons. The President signed
- 6:12Speaker 2: fourteen hundred pardons. You think he signed fourteen hundred pieces
- 6:17Speaker 2: of paper. No, he used an auto pen. But that
- 6:22Speaker 2: photograph of an autopen what it does is tell us
- 6:27Speaker 2: volumes about what the President thinks of Joe Biden, maybe
- 6:33Speaker 2: figuring rightly so in his mind, that Joe Biden should
- 6:37Speaker 2: never have been president, that this is a yuts against
- 6:40Speaker 2: Joe Biden. You used an auto pen. Well, everybody does.
- 6:44Speaker 2: I find that absolutely fascinating.
- 6:46Speaker 1: And then I can't wait for the East Wing ballroom. Oh,
- 6:51Speaker 1: the East Wing no longer exists.
- 6:54Speaker 2: You're gonna list You're gonna have just the East Ballroom
- 6:57Speaker 2: connected to the White House, all right now. Huntington Beach.
- 7:01Speaker 2: I've talked about this for a bunch of years. It
- 7:03Speaker 2: used to be surf City, USA. That was it, songs
- 7:09Speaker 2: about it, and it was just this idyllic place. So
- 7:12Speaker 2: what happened, Well, it's gone from this. Ronald Reagan called
- 7:18Speaker 2: Orange County in general, a place where good Republicans go
- 7:21Speaker 2: to top to die any minute. As a compliment, Well,
- 7:25Speaker 2: in recent years, Huntington Beach used to be the hippie Beatside,
- 7:29Speaker 2: Sir for Haven now has drawn national intention for leaning
- 7:34Speaker 2: so dramatically to the right. It's a conservative majority city
- 7:38Speaker 2: council and has pulled right leaning policies into action. So
- 7:43Speaker 2: it's they've done it more so than any other city.
- 7:47Speaker 2: And now we're looking at this oasis of conservatism within
- 7:56Speaker 2: surrounding liberal areas. Now, at one point at Huntyson Beach
- 8:01Speaker 2: had a Democratic led city council, but in twenty twenty three,
- 8:05Speaker 2: some unknown conservatives backed by the already seated Republican members,
- 8:11Speaker 2: ousted the last remaining Democrats. It is all conservative and
- 8:16Speaker 2: by the way, as Democrats are bitching and moaning about.
- 8:19Speaker 1: This, they were elected. It wasn't a rigged election. It
- 8:25Speaker 1: was an election.
- 8:27Speaker 2: So the all Republican group dubbed themselves the Magnificent seven Wow,
- 8:35Speaker 2: and they hit the ground running, trying to ban children's
- 8:38Speaker 2: books by arguing that it's porn, pushing to prohibit flying
- 8:43Speaker 2: the Pride flag at government buildings, opposing vaccine mask mandates,
- 8:49Speaker 2: dissolving watchdog committees formed in the aftermath of white supremac
- 8:54Speaker 2: hate crimes in the nineties, and the mayor Pat Burns
- 8:58Speaker 2: elected the council in twenty two two summed it up
- 9:01Speaker 2: as it's a middle class town. Basically, we just want
- 9:04Speaker 2: to live our lives with as little as government control
- 9:08Speaker 2: as possible. And if you ask a former member, a Democrat,
- 9:14Speaker 2: Dan Kalmak, he said, it's all about housing.
- 9:17Speaker 1: That's where it all started.
- 9:19Speaker 2: Kalmuk said safety and crime have always been issues as
- 9:23Speaker 2: long as he can remember. The fights were always over housing.
- 9:27Speaker 2: Huntington Beach Republican mayor describes the city as a beacon
- 9:31Speaker 2: of hope in the fight for local control. I think
- 9:33Speaker 2: that's fair to describe it that way. And he has
- 9:37Speaker 2: to firm against the state Housing law, which mandates that
- 9:41Speaker 2: every city keep up with state requirements for adding housing,
- 9:45Speaker 2: and Huntington Beach just doesn't do it, so the state
- 9:49Speaker 2: is suing the city.
- 9:52Speaker 1: Now.
- 9:53Speaker 2: One of my favorite parts about this has to do
- 9:56Speaker 2: with the Community Parent Advisory Council to monitor books in
- 10:02Speaker 2: the Huntington Beach Public Library, and the city council in
- 10:06Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, when it became super conservative, created this
- 10:10Speaker 2: council to monitor the books, specifically books that conservatives deem
- 10:16Speaker 2: pornographic because they discuss puberty or themes of queer identity.
- 10:22Speaker 2: And it was a five hour public comment period, and
- 10:25Speaker 2: then now you had residents holding posters leave our kids alone,
- 10:29Speaker 2: And of course it was contentious as hell. Now, city councilwoman,
- 10:33Speaker 2: and this I love this. Gracie Van Dermark said, it's
- 10:37Speaker 2: not puberty or potty training books I'm teaching. I'm talking
- 10:41Speaker 2: about books that teach miners how to perform sex acts.
- 10:46Speaker 2: And among those books is one titled Grandpa's Pride, which
- 10:51Speaker 2: chronicles the story of a queer grandparent. And she said
- 10:55Speaker 2: the book is inappropriate because it shows the grandpa kissing
- 11:00Speaker 2: while he is reps dressed in bdsm attire. Now, I said,
- 11:08Speaker 2: come on, I mean, you know that's really pushing it right.
- 11:13Speaker 1: I mean you can you know, so maybe.
- 11:15Speaker 2: He's dressed a little weird, but bdsm attire, I mean
- 11:19Speaker 2: that's going pretty far in describing it. So I asked
- 11:24Speaker 2: and to pull a photograph of that page.
- 11:29Speaker 1: Sure enough, it's bdsm attire. There is no issue.
- 11:34Speaker 2: They are right and as open as I am about
- 11:40Speaker 2: any kind of censorship in schools, I gotta tell you,
- 11:43Speaker 2: if I have.
- 11:44Speaker 1: A third or fifth.
- 11:45Speaker 2: Or seventh grader, I don't want grandpa dressed up like
- 11:50Speaker 2: he's going to a BDS clumb club.
- 11:52Speaker 1: I mean, there he is.
- 11:54Speaker 2: It is absolutely outrageous, the stockings up mid th.
- 12:00Speaker 1: With a garter belt, and I mean just all of it.
- 12:04Speaker 2: Grandpa a bds M aficionado. All right, So that's the
- 12:14Speaker 2: fun part of the story. By the way, forget about
- 12:16Speaker 2: the politics of it. I don't care about the politics. Well,
- 12:18Speaker 2: I do because I hate censorship of any kind. But Grandpa,
- 12:25Speaker 2: you know what they did.
- 12:26Speaker 1: They someone took a picture of my grandfather.
- 12:29Speaker 2: And use that as a model for this page in
- 12:35Speaker 2: this book. And as my grandpa used to say, my
- 12:39Speaker 2: grandfather used to say in his very accented English, don't
- 12:44Speaker 2: knock it till you've tried it. Actually, that's not true
- 12:48Speaker 2: at all. My grandfather isn't around and hasn't been since
- 12:52Speaker 2: the forties. All right, Now, a moment or two about
- 12:57Speaker 2: the Louver theft of those extraordinary gems. I mean, these
- 13:02Speaker 2: are the Crown Jewels of France. Eight pieces that form
- 13:07Speaker 2: part of the Crown Jewels stolen, as we know it
- 13:10Speaker 2: became international news. Stolen from the Louver Museum by the thieves.
- 13:16Speaker 2: This is not a unique situation. There's been a rash
- 13:20Speaker 2: of gold related thefts across Europe over the past couple
- 13:23Speaker 2: of years, and the experts are saying, if no massive
- 13:26Speaker 2: reward is being given for a quick ransom or a
- 13:32Speaker 2: chance that the investigators find out immediately, which is now
- 13:36Speaker 2: getting going away very quickly, it looks like they are
- 13:41Speaker 2: going to sell these gems to black market jewelers. And
- 13:47Speaker 2: how are they going to do that, because you know,
- 13:50Speaker 2: everybody knows what these crown jewels look like, so they're
- 13:55Speaker 2: not going to be displayed any place.
- 13:57Speaker 1: Is someone going to buy them just to keep them
- 13:59Speaker 1: in a drawl?
- 14:00Speaker 2: Are because some very wealthy collector says, I just want
- 14:04Speaker 2: to look at them occasionally.
- 14:06Speaker 1: Probably not.
- 14:08Speaker 2: What's probably going to happen, according to the experts, is
- 14:13Speaker 2: those jewels, those that jewelry set is going to be
- 14:16Speaker 2: broken up, the gold melted, and the diamonds and emeralds
- 14:23Speaker 2: and other precious jewels are going to be sold individually.
- 14:26Speaker 2: And the big ones, these large emeralds and large diamonds,
- 14:32Speaker 2: which real experts, no that belongs to that said, I
- 14:35Speaker 2: mean they can recognize this. Those diamonds are just recut.
- 14:40Speaker 2: I mean they'll be smaller certainly, but they still are
- 14:45Speaker 2: going to have immense value. And that seems to be
- 14:48Speaker 2: the problem now that doesn't happen with paintings because everybody
- 14:53Speaker 2: knows what a painting looks like.
- 14:55Speaker 1: The world art, the world art, well, the art.
- 15:00Speaker 2: World knows exactly when something is stolen, what is stolen,
- 15:04Speaker 2: and there's a registry of stolen art doesn't exist with
- 15:08Speaker 2: gems and very difficult to track down unless they're intact,
- 15:15Speaker 2: and at this point, very few people think that they're intact.
- 15:19Speaker 1: That by now they have gone all over the.
- 15:21Speaker 2: World and France is a real investigation in France, how
- 15:24Speaker 2: can they do this? Well, they took that furniture mover
- 15:29Speaker 2: thing that lifts furniture up. It's a hydraulic device like
- 15:35Speaker 2: a cherry picker. I guess that they brought up to
- 15:39Speaker 2: the second story.
- 15:41Speaker 1: Do you know why they have to do it with that?
- 15:44Speaker 1: And it's like not that suspicious because the doorways and
- 15:47Speaker 1: stuff in France are a lot smaller. So apparently when
- 15:50Speaker 1: they bring furniture up, they have to take it in
- 15:53Speaker 1: through the windows. Well they weren't.
- 15:56Speaker 2: No one questioned it, and they actually break one of
- 15:59Speaker 2: the windows go into the gallery while people were there.
- 16:03Speaker 2: This is Sunday morning at nine point thirty, and there
- 16:05Speaker 2: were guards there, there was people going through and they
- 16:09Speaker 2: smashed the glass and they were only there for a
- 16:12Speaker 2: couple of minutes. Grab the jewelry, went outside, went down ladders,
- 16:16Speaker 2: got on scooters, and they were gone.
- 16:18Speaker 1: Now there are two there are two thoughts going through this.
- 16:22Speaker 2: One is these are professional guys that did it so
- 16:24Speaker 2: quickly that only people who case the place knew exactly
- 16:28Speaker 2: what they're doing, got the materials, got that furniture loader.
- 16:32Speaker 2: Others are saying, you know, these guys were amateurs. They
- 16:35Speaker 2: left tons of DNA, they left the vest, they left
- 16:40Speaker 2: the ladders, and so we either they're professional or they're
- 16:44Speaker 2: not professional. But it doesn't even matter. Those jewels are
- 16:48Speaker 2: basically gone. Also, you would think that these cabinets that
- 16:54Speaker 2: house this quality of jewels would be very thick, the
- 17:00Speaker 2: glass that you can't even smash through with a sledgehammer, wouldn't.
- 17:04Speaker 1: You think that? Nope? Nope.
- 17:08Speaker 2: Turns out security and major museums around the world is
- 17:11Speaker 2: so lax that some experts are surprised that's not happening.
- 17:16Speaker 2: More often so the French. They're out and these were
- 17:21Speaker 2: all Napoleonic stuff. I mean, these were you know, the
- 17:24Speaker 2: new people Napoleon gave these two. Uh you what's her face, Eugene,
- 17:30Speaker 2: whatever the hell his wife's name is.
- 17:32Speaker 1: I'm very bad at French names. Eugene.
- 17:35Speaker 2: That was it. It was Eugene. Okay, Amy's laughing. Okay,
- 17:45Speaker 2: now here is something that is not a joke. And
- 17:48Speaker 2: this is what happened at the Pentagon under Pete Hegsith.
- 17:53Speaker 2: He is a I think a genuine hero when he
- 17:56Speaker 2: was in the service. I think he was the second
- 17:57Speaker 2: lieutenant and received medals for heroism.
- 17:59Speaker 1: So he's the real deal.
- 18:02Speaker 2: But no management credentials at all any Secretary of Defense
- 18:07Speaker 2: or secretary of War now and there is. And the
- 18:11Speaker 2: argument is that the mainstream media outlets are biased and
- 18:15Speaker 2: oh by that, I think they do slightly go to
- 18:19Speaker 2: the left. Not all of them, but I think a
- 18:21Speaker 2: lot of them do. And his position is that those
- 18:25Speaker 2: are wild leftists and it's fake news at ABC and
- 18:31Speaker 2: CBS and the major networks and news out outlets, and
- 18:38Speaker 2: he says those are left wing fake news outlets. And
- 18:44Speaker 2: what he has done is he has told the press
- 18:47Speaker 2: credential to the Pentagon, you clear with me questions that
- 18:52Speaker 2: you can ask. You can't go and ask questions, you
- 18:56Speaker 2: can't go behind the scenes, you can't go to sources
- 18:58Speaker 2: unless I've cleared those questions. Okay, And so in a
- 19:05Speaker 2: manner of screw you, most major news outlets have turned
- 19:10Speaker 2: in their credentials, not interested in dealing with that. Even
- 19:13Speaker 2: Newsmax and Fox News said we don't want any part
- 19:17Speaker 2: of that. So what Headseth has done the Defense Department
- 19:22Speaker 2: is they have put in new media outlets and independent
- 19:25Speaker 2: journalists who in fact, will be fair and balanced. Where
- 19:32Speaker 2: we Americans are going to get real news. We're going
- 19:35Speaker 2: to get balanced news. We're not going to get news
- 19:39Speaker 2: that is one side or the other. Organizations like bloggers,
- 19:44Speaker 2: right wing organizations. How about Lindell TV, Mike Lindell's organization,
- 19:53Speaker 2: mister my pillow, you think he's right wing?
- 19:57Speaker 1: Not at all real America's voice.
- 20:01Speaker 2: Yeah, Gateway Pundit, post Millennial, Human Events, national polls.
- 20:06Speaker 1: You never heard of these.
- 20:08Speaker 2: Because these are bloggers, these are sites. They're not broadcast sites.
- 20:17Speaker 2: Not that that matters. I think I believe the Internet
- 20:21Speaker 2: information is valuable. But Mike Lindell, Lindell TV, that's not
- 20:26Speaker 2: fake news. All the conspiracy theories that they've come up with,
- 20:33Speaker 2: that's real news. It's what ABC and CBS is reporting
- 20:38Speaker 2: that's fake and that's the problem, and it's being portrayed
- 20:43Speaker 2: by the Pentagon that the Lindell's of this world are
- 20:47Speaker 2: telling the truth and the ABC's of this world are
- 20:51Speaker 2: lying to you. What's up is down, what's down is up?
- 20:56Speaker 2: And this one scares me. You know what I did.
- 20:59Speaker 2: I went to the No King's rally on Saturday for
- 21:02Speaker 2: the first time in my life, first time in my
- 21:04Speaker 2: life I've ever gone to a demonstration. And my placard
- 21:09Speaker 2: I think we put it up on the uh Instagram
- 21:13Speaker 2: site at Bill Handle show and there's my placard.
- 21:16Speaker 1: I'm holding it up.
- 21:17Speaker 2: Freedom of the press, you know, I don't mind you
- 21:23Speaker 2: have a couple of right wing.
- 21:26Speaker 1: Excuse me, news outlets and bloggers, et cetera. Did you
- 21:30Speaker 1: hear that you literally choked on it when you said
- 21:32Speaker 1: right wing?
- 21:33Speaker 2: No I was choking anyway, No, No, I just have
- 21:35Speaker 2: I just have a heart. And by the way, I'd
- 21:37Speaker 2: feel the same way if it was left wing, I
- 21:39Speaker 2: really would. I'd feel the same way if all the
- 21:43Speaker 2: right wing news outlets were precluded and only the leftists were.
- 21:49Speaker 1: It's just not right. It's it's not right.
- 21:52Speaker 2: So anyway, thank you for pointing out that I choked
- 21:57Speaker 2: on that. Making making a political state eight out of
- 22:00Speaker 2: my coughing.
- 22:03Speaker 1: Thank you, Amy, welcome.
- 22:05Speaker 2: That's why you're on the show. This is why I
- 22:07Speaker 2: love you so much being on the show. KFI I
- 22:10Speaker 2: am sixty.
- 22:12Speaker 1: You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
- 22:14Speaker 2: Catch my show Monday through Friday six am to nine am,
- 22:17Speaker 2: and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.