The Cardboard Box Candidate

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And they use, I didn't think about this, it makes perfect sense. They use artificial intelligence to take my recording, compare it to the text of the book, and if there's just the slightest bit of difference, they'll flag it and I have to record the whole thing. Oh, well, at least they bring you into it re-record it. I thought you were going to say they just can do a punch with your, with an AI generated voice. Soon enough. Well, again, I'm absolutely, I'm flattered that you hear. This is what old-fashioned radio looks like. I love it. I love radio. Honestly, I got your invitation and first I was like, this is so weird. That's so weird. I should just, I shouldn't, I shouldn't do it because I don't know what this is. And then I was like, you know what? I should do it. I love it. I mean, the email exchange between us. We don't have to tell everything, but it was funny because you said basically like, oh, I like the idea of old-fashioned radio. Do you take callers and how do you do this? And I thought, I'm not old enough for this to be old-fashioned just yet. That was a compliment. Classic radio. I look, I love, I love, I love radio. I always, I have listened to all kinds of radio. So this is my dream come true. But you're obviously an author. Do you, is that the, Is that your top line? What do you say you do on a regular basis? Well, I'm a writer. So I've been a magazine writer, essayist author for, I'm like over 30 years. Isn't that terrifying? And I like, like I've published seven books and I've written for all kinds of magazines, long form reporting, you know, profiles, all that kind of stuff. And I was at Los Angeles Times opinion columnist from 2005 to... 2015, 16 or so. And, you know, in 2020, like everybody else, I started a podcast during the pandemic, got a puppy and started a podcast. So total basic. Well, you just went all in. Just total cliche. Everything. Yeah, so I started a podcast that was originally called the Unspeakable Podcast because that's also the name of one of my books. And then over time, last year, it's now in its sixth year. I changed it to the unspeak easy because I've also developed this whole enterprise around the podcast where I get people together and we do retreats and I do these, you know, off the record, sanity, spa, vacations sometimes I call them, free speech vacations, called the unspeakeasy. So now the podcast is called it. Did you just do one of those last month? I did one in Los Angeles. And, you know, it started off. as being just for women, because I have this whole theory that women drive cancel culture and women are affected by kind of censorship and social policing more than men, or at least in a different way. So it started off, it was just for women. We would do these retreats and we'd go off and talk about all kinds of things. But now we're doing co-ed retreats. So we've got a big one planned for the fall in upstate New York. Great. And you're originally from... Texas, is that right? I lived in Texas. I was born in California, actually. I'm a native, and we kind of moved all over the place. I lived in Texas until I was about nine, but then I grew up mostly in New Jersey. Sorry to say. That's all right. I can hear it in your accent. New Jersey? I'm just kidding. Don't. You looked a little offended by that. Oh, I'm totally offended. That is not the case. All right. When we come back, we're going to be talking about these, the primary,

election from Tuesday night is going to drag on for days. The president has chimed in. We knew he was going to about the length of time that it takes to count ballots. We'll give you the latest updated numbers. We do expect there'll be more today. There's some weird stuff that went on in the count yesterday. All of that stuff. I know you sat down with Spencer Pratt recently, and we'll talk about him. And the phenomenon that he is. I mean... Whether you love them, you hate it, you have to acknowledge that this guy is making some sort of a splash in politics. And I don't mean just in California. I mean, in general, it's getting back to what I've always said is since we were a country born out of frustration and anger at the powers that be, he's a perfect example of how it's supposed to go. There's going to be, it's going to be the next Hamilton musical, but it's going to be called Prack. That's the level of historical importance. That's interesting. All right. You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM 640. A couple of things that are going on around the world. President Trump has signaled that he's probably going to nominate Todd Blanche to take on the role of Attorney General on a permanent basis. He's been the acting Attorney General for a couple of months ever since Pam Bondi decided that she was going to step down. This is a guy who had acted as the president's personal attorney. for years, actually. So a jury has decided over here in the Valley that Rebecca Grossman and former major leaguer Scott Erickson are to blame for the deaths of those two young boys who were hit and killed by Rebecca's SUV back in Westlake Village a few years ago. The jury awarded the family, the boy's parents and their younger brother, $176 million. That's just the wrongful death in emotional distress. That's that's Today, they start the punitive damages part of the trial, which is amazing. We'll talk more in detail about that coming up a little bit later. Okay, so the latest numbers that came down for the race for, where do you want to start? Do you want to do mayor or governor first? I don't know. Do you want to start small and go a bit? If you want to start small, start with governor. Right, that's a good point. Right now, 55.8% of the vote is in, or has been counted, I should say. Steve Hilton's still in the lead, 27.6%. Xavier Becerra. two points behind them at 25.6%. And Tom Steyer, below them in third place, just under 20%. And according to the Secretary of State's office, there's still 4 million votes to count. Four million. By the way, that number jumped up yesterday. The number of votes left to count. I don't know why we can't have a better handle on this, on how votes are cast, counted, et cetera, here in California.

I don't know either. I mean, and do you know how they actually count them? Like, is there a machine? Is there a, I mean, obviously they're not. It's a machine. Yeah. Okay. But here's, but it's different than if you were to go to a polling place. And again, the problem, we talked about it yesterday and the day before, the problems with voting, why it takes so long, if you want to even call that a problem, because some people don't agree that it's a problem, is that you vote in person. Your vote is scanned immediately. and uploaded to the county board of elections or wherever you happen, whatever they call it in your county. If you're voting by mail or on that ballot, on that absentee ballot, it's not counted until the day of the election, starting on Tuesday night. And obviously it's continuing for these next few days. There's an inherent problem with that. And we've said this before. It allows too much oxygen for people who say that there's hijinks going on. I don't believe that it's Democrats harvesting votes or waiting to do the count until they get the results that they want. That would be too easy to expose. It's that if you believe that it's important to have trust in your elections, do something to speed this up. Yeah, is it just inertia? Do they not care? Do they just, can they not get it together? Well, I wonder, listen, this is where I do believe some of the conspiracy parts of it. If it were Republicans that were getting those later votes, if it was Steve Hilton who saw his lead growing over Xavier Becerra in these next couple of days, there would be a lot more heads on fire in Sacramento. There will be a lot more people who go, well, there must be something wrong. But because Democrats control the legislature and their side is the side that tends to benefit from these longer drawn out results periods, they're just fine. They're okay. They don't mind. And they like to throw shade at the people like me who say something like, hey, just speed this up a little bit. Because I'm not saying there's anything nefarious going on. But. there are plenty of people who will look at it and blame you for there being nefarious things going on. Well, you're creating problems for yourself that are not necessary. I mean, the concept of a stolen election, that's an article of faith for a lot of people. They just assume that it is. And most people don't vote at all partly because of this. Sure. And add Prop 50 into that. Add the fact that redistricting... I mean, we still see some of these results probably not turning out the way Democrats were expecting in terms of setting up districts that they thought were guaranteed Democrat that are not right now, at least early on. People are just, there's so many people that are, that feel disenfranchised in the state of California. And I'm not just talking about registered Republicans. There are plenty of independents who may lean conservative, lean to that side, who just go, why is it? It's not worth it. It's not worth it for me to cast my vote if it's just going to go down this same road every time. Right. But do we know why Republicans vote early, supposedly? Is there some psychology behind that? They're just more organized. They're older?

I've heard that older people tend to be more conservative. But that would lend itself to them voting on election day in person. Right. In terms of the mechanics of why more Democrats voted late in this election specifically. The theory is that I've heard that governor-wise, they wanted to wait and see who was going to evolve into the leader because there were so many candidates. Early on, Katie Porter led that she was leading in the polls until she tore her mask off like a Scooby-Doo villain and everybody saw she was a giant monster. And then Eric Swalwell, we know how rapy he got. And then Javier Pissera, who I saw referred to as... The cardboard box candidate. There's nothing there. You say that like it's a negative thing. Come on, Gary. I'm just saying there's a light cardboard. It's better than styrofoam. But they waited. They waited until they saw who, and then they want to vote for the guy who's going to win. Right. Yeah, which is a good strategy. I kind of feel bad about that. Like, oh, I don't want to just run with the herd. But yeah, of course it makes sense. Okay. All right. So fair, fair enough. But no, it is aggravating. And I just, I keep hearing people say. across the country. Well, California is a failed state. The fact that they can't get these votes counted and they don't even expect to. I think Nate Silver, actually, from 538 wrote that on Twitter Tuesday. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was, somebody said it on the commentary podcast. I was listening to on the drive over here. So it's getting around. It's a failed state. And that's the thing is you, the. The people in power currently, whether it's Gavin Newsom or Shirley Weber at the Secretary of State's office, somebody should realize this is a fire that is being lit under you. Don't ignore it. bring, bring California back to prominence when it comes to the availability of, of the amazing tech minds that we have in the Silicon Valley. Ask them to come in. How could you, how could we make sure that votes are verified? Identification is verified. God forbid you ask for an idea. But, but then, and that we instill confidence. Not just for the people voting here in California, but for other states to look at us and go, that's the model that we should be following. Yeah, well, I mean, Florida used to have a real problem with this. And after 2000, they had to pull it together, right? Because look what it caused. It was the hanging Chad saga. People remember that far back. So sometimes it takes a real crisis to get states to pull it together. Hopefully it won't be that severe. You just brings up, you never see a lot of 25-year-olds named Chad. Well, also because, you know, Chad is in the in the Groyper world. Chad is like the ultimate, you know, man who's successful with women. Right. The Chad and the Stacey. Sure. Right. Yeah, but. Hanging Chad.

I bet, yeah, they don't know. There's regular chat and then there's hanging chat. When we come back, the president has chimed in, of course, on our vote count process. We'll talk about that, but also what we've seen in the changes when it comes to the race for mayor in the city of L.A. You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM 640. Just before the show started, former national security advisor, John Bolton, who's been on our show, will plead guilty to unlawfully retaining classified information. He was indicted October of last year, 18 counts of illegally hoarding or sending sensitive information. We don't know if the deal means that he's going to plead guilty to all of them. It's probably not likely that he would plead guilty to all 18 counts. Lawyers for John Bolton, the Department of Justice, have not yet responded to the New York Post's request for comment. A hearing is scheduled for a couple of weeks from now, Greenbelt, Maryland, and federal court. I didn't realize he would plead guilty to that. Yeah. Okay. Megan, Dom has joined us filling in for Shannon today. We were talking before about the votes that came in before we get back to that. Hey, Megan. Just letting you know you have a fan up here in upstate New York. Good books and good reporting and you're doing quite well on that show now. There you go. Wow. Upstate New York. They're all over the place. That's so nice. That is nice. I didn't think it would be about me. I thought they would be. That's how that works. That's how that works. Yes, it is. Hi, guys. I fall into that category of waiting to see where the chips were falling. I liked Matt Mayhan, but when it became clear, he didn't have a chance. I actually voted for Hilton. I am a registered Republican, but I'm disgusted with the Republicans right now. Anyway, that's the way I voted on it. I'm sick of what the Democrats have done to our state, and I hope we see some changes, but I don't have a lot of faith in that. Have a great day. Bye. Thank you. That frustration is what is fueling so much. of the electorate right now. I wouldn't say politicians outside of somebody like Spencer Pratt, but that frustration with, these are the people I have to choose from? Yeah, no, it's everywhere. They feel politically homeless. Yeah. I mean, that that is the, that is the term. And it's just really astonishing that we continue to have this two-party system. I guess there's no way out of it. But like, what are the percentage of the Americans that are registered independence or no party affiliation? I don't know, but it's probably getting larger. I looked at up actually the beginning of this week because I was trying to figure that same question out. I don't have a great number. I don't have the answer to it. But I did see the most.

closely um The most accurate, I think, that I saw was a Pew Research poll that suggested that without doing party-specific affiliation, if you had people who were conservative or lean conservative or claim to be independent but tend to vote conservative, it's about 45%. And then the same thing for tend to be liberal or are self-described liberal is also about 45%. That would leave 10% of people who were actually and accurately described as independent, that they would go down through a ballot and go, I like that person, I like that, but not do a straight down the ballot based on party kind of election. Right, right. Well, that's extra work. Yeah, it's a strange moment. I mean, I don't know whether or not to feel depressed or hopeful. I mean, I guess it's it toggles back and forth, right? Well, and in California, We're supposed to be leading the nation. I know it's been said many times. I know Gavin Newsom has said it. Steve Hilton said it on Tuesday night during his speech after some of the polls had closed. Where is... California is to the United States, what the United States is to the rest of the world. Right. Yeah. When California catches a cold, the country sneezes or something, or something the other way around. It should be that way. I mean, you and I have both California natives. We know this place. We know the history of this place. And it's so well described by some of these politicians of being the capital of innovation, the capital of creativity. The most beautiful nature that exists in the country is here in California. Fifth largest economy. Yeah. All of that stuff is all reasons why we should be excited, happy. We should be, you know, drawing, you know, capital investment from around the world. And we got people dropping trow and, you know, leaving their fecum on the street corners. Fecum. Is that the singular of the feces? So I looked it up one time because I heard someone else say it. I believe it's a Latin term for obvious poo. Okay. President Trump has chimed in on... Speaking of which... Why the votes... Why the votes trickle in in California. And his quote, on Truth Social, the Democrats are added again. They are trying to steal the governor of California primary and the mayor of Los Angeles primary away from two great Republican candidates. Here we go with the very late and massive numbers of mail-in ballots. In another post, he wrote... under investigation by the U.S. attorney's office in Los Angeles. So. Okay. Listen, that investigation is not going to go anywhere. They're not going to find anything to ferries. This is the way. Yeah.

To quote the Mandalorian, this is the way California votes now. We can change. We, I mean, we, the electorate, we can change that. We can put pressure on the state legislature to speed all of this up so that we do not look like morons in this. And again, I don't believe there's widespread fraud, but I do believe that they have an issue with public perception when it comes to the... accuracy of the vote. Yeah, and especially now we have so many people, you know, dropping short videos or here I am standing in front of a public toilet and I see that 26 people are registered to vote at this address and it turns out it's a public toilet. No, I just saw this this morning and it turns out that this had been... a kind of transitional housing sort of bridge housing project and at one point there had been a lot of homeless people and yes some of them can get registered to vote that's not illegal if you have an ID you can get registered to vote and so there is a story there it's it's it's not illegitimate but i mean especially we just have rumor mongering all the time it's this is not the the media ecosystem for any kind of um muddy perception of things. Yeah, because it catches fire too quickly. Yeah. Because it spreads too quickly. And I think that's a problem that they're not acknowledging. No, they don't acknowledge most problems in this state. They don't have to. They should change the license plate. There's no pressure from the other side. Nothing to see here. Right. It should be the motto of the golden state. So we'll see how this pans out. But I do want to talk about Spencer Pratt. I know you sat down with Spencer Pratt recently and had a lengthy conversation with him. And his candidacy and now what appears to be, you know, this. five-month run for the general election between he and Karen Bass is going to be a test of whether frustration is enough to fuel an actual political candidate. Yeah. You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM 640. Coming up at the top of the hour, we'll talk more about these latest studies that talk about the extended aftermath. of the fires that we have seen since January 7th of 2025, the Eaton Fire and Palisades Fire. And the idea that obviously there were plenty of people, Megan included, who lost everything in the fires, but that the danger extended well beyond the footprint of the fire. So we'll talk about that top of the hour. But we have been talking, Megan Dom has joined us. We've been talking about... these the races for governor and mayor and the one that's for mayor specifically brings with it i mean governor to a certain extent Steve Hilton's never run for office before he's been in politics he's been involved in politics more as an advisor consultant role but he's never run for office before he hasn't been an american citizen all that long has he was it 2020 that he became a citizen i think uh living the dream truly uh and then you've got a guy you've got spencer pratt la born and bred lived here his whole life

who gains notoriety, I guess. Infamy. Infamy, thank you. It's a better word. As a reality TV show guy. A villain, particularly, right? Particularly a villain on a couple of different shows. And in terms of general knowledge, just kind of after the shows are over, shows up on TMZ once in a while, but is not really... It's not really in the zeitgeist anymore. He was doing a lot of stuff. And, I mean, he had a crystal business. And he was making mischief for himself and I think advertising him as much as he could. But yeah. So he loses his house January 7th, 2025. He and his reality show wife, who's his real wife. I mean, but and a couple of kids and his parents. His parents lost their house too. Right. So he shows up on the on everybody's radar earlier this year when he says he's going to run for mayor against Karen Bass. Because born out of the frustration, not only about the fires and his perception that the city let down everybody in the palisades, but also his frustration with the city that he grew up loving. Los Angeles. Los Angeles. And saying that it has no one is telling you the true or no one is acknowledging the problems with the city that was once the great shining city on a hill. that is now just turned into an open drug market toilet. A shining turd? Yeah. Yeah. And we should say that before he announced his mayoral candidacy, he was one of the most vocal victims of the Palisades fire. He was really speaking up. He was seeing himself as a community activist. He had, he went to Washington and he testified. I think he. filed at least one lawsuit. He was really a spokesperson for that particular fire in that community, which is why it's hilarious when Karen Bass later said that she had never heard of him, meaning she had never heard of him as a reality star. But like, what a self-own there because this is one of her constituents. This is, you know, arguably the most vocal of her constituents talking about the fire and she's saying she had never heard of him. She, and I think this is one of the things that he has brought up is that she, Karen Bass, and people like her who have been in politics their entire lives. do not have that connection. They like to claim that they have a connection to the proletariat. They like to use the word community. Yeah. And it's an artificial thing. You may meet people, but you do so in a very sterile environment. You do that when you invite them to your office or you do an event somewhere. It feels performative. It has the kind of, it has an aesthetic of. Yeah. interaction with the now he's doing some of that too because he's running for mayor i mean he's in those places that he probably wouldn't necessarily go he's at the barbecue in south l.a he's you know venturing out from the west side where he might not necessarily go on a regular basis but he's doing so to try to get the questions that need to be answered yeah um when you sat down with him did you go into that interview with him thinking

What was your, and how did it change over the course of 45 minutes? I will say, and I never watched The Hills. I'm not a reality show fan. He's not somebody who would have appealed to me. But I am somebody who has been very concerned about animal welfare, especially vis-a-vis street homelessness for like years. I mean, anybody who knows me knows that I would sort of half jokingly, not really say, the one thing I want is to get dogs away from. severely mentally ill homeless people. And a couple friends of mine were like, you know, Megan, somebody actually is talking about that, as a matter of fact, and it's Spencer Pratt. And I thought, what? And so I started following him more and more. And I've also, I've been really concerned about street homelessness. I've covered on my podcast. I've done some reporting on it. And I really liked the way he was just saying out loud what we could all see with our own eyes. And so, you know, I have a podcast. I have an interview podcast. And I reached out to his campaign, I don't know, a couple months ago. And I said, look, my podcast is not huge. It's not the kind of show he would normally go on, but he needs my audience. My audience, it's not the, you know, Joe Rogan audience. It's not the Adam Carolla audience, although Adam has been on my show and vice versa. But these are the kind of liberal elites of Los Angeles that he needs to reach. And they said, okay. They said, come on on. It's clear based on the numbers also that if he's at 30% right now, the number of registered Republicans in the city of L.A. that would be voting for him. It's somewhere around 20 or 21%, I believe. If that. If that. So he has grabbed some of those audience members that you're talking about. And he has been able to say the things at first you might think are just trite. not very eloquent versions of political policy, which is don't let my city burn down. Stop pooping on the streets. Close down the open air drug markets. That's not nuanced. That's just blatant. And he's stuck to those messages. And it's been very, very clear. And stop animal abuse on Skid Row. Yeah, which is something that people were not aware of, and he has platformed that. And that is nonpartisan. I mean, I think everybody can agree that they don't want to see that. Yeah. I mean, and you're right, there's sort of different layers to his messaging, right? So some of it is not nuanced, for sure. Karen Bass burned my house down. I mean, you know, she didn't literally burn your house down. It's a good poster. You know, there's a lot of, it was a perfect storm. Let's just put it that way. But when he talks about the homelessness, he actually does have a plan. I mean, he sat there and made a nine minute video where he laid out the different cohorts of homelessness because obviously not everybody is psychotic on the street living in a tent. There are some people who are couch surfing. There are some people who are living in their cars. But I think he has made very clear that these people need help and they need different kinds of help and that we need to have a policy that gets people the right kind of help and gets them off the street. Now, it's not going to be that easily. accomplished, but the fact that he's even saying it is far and away more than what most elected officials have done. Yeah. If we do get new numbers, I don't expect them until this afternoon, but if we do get new numbers in that mayor's race or the governor's race, we'll definitely bring it to you. All right. When we come back, though, make sure that we're going to talk about the toxic metals, these new studies that suggest that the fires actually caused danger for a whole lot more people than just those in the actual.

fire footprint. So we'll talk about that up next. Gary and Shannon, Megan Daum in for Shannon today. We'll be right back right after this. This is KFI. You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon show. You can always hear us live on KFI AM 649 a.m. to noon every Monday through Friday and anytime on demand on the IHeart Radio app.