BENSON BYTE: Rep. Kevin Kiley on California's Wildlife "Bridge to Nowhere" - "The Whole Point Is to Lie to People"

Now it's time for another Guy Benson, Guy Benson Fight, where we bring you the day's most interesting interviews in a bite-sized package. For the full episode, visit Guy Benson.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. Happy hour time here on Guy Benson on this Thursday from the Tony Snow Studios in Washington, D.C. I'm Guy Benson. So glad you're here with us. Guy Benson.com is our online home. The podcast is available for free every day on demand, including... Bonus Guy Benson on the weekends. It's Guy Benson.com, Fox Newspodcast.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. Email us, GBS at Fox.com. Follow us on social. At Guy Benson. You can follow me as well. At Guy Benson. This radio hour brought you by the finished long drink. Delicious. It's really good. It is alcoholic. So 21 plus only, please. Always drink responsibly. Thelongdrink.com. Catch me tonight on special report. I'll be on the panel. John Roberts in for Brett Bayer this evening. I'll be on set here at the D.C. Bureau. That's just around 640, 645 Eastern Fox News Channel. Well, joining us now is Congressman Kevin Kiley of California. He has for a very long time been a Republican, but recently officially became an independent. Congressman, welcome back to the show. Thanks, Guy. Appreciate you having me. All right, let's talk about this decision to formally leave the Republican conference and party and become an independent. I know that you've got a tough election coming up with the new maps that the Democrats have drawn, specifically really to target you. They want to draw you out of a seat. And now you've got a big political fight on your hands coming up in November. You've left the GOP. Talk us through that decision. Yeah, well, Gavin Newsom has brought partisan gerrymandering back to California. He's overthrown or at least sidelined the Independent Redistricting Commission that we had in place. And, you know, frankly, this has happened in other states as well. And I think that, you know, what gerrymandering does is it says we're going to elevate partisanship above everything else. We're going to make it the sum and substance of our politics. And so, you know, my view is, okay, what's a good antidote to that? Let's just take partisanship out of the equation, just like when you elect a mayor or a district attorney or a sheriff. These are nonpartisan offices, and so, you know, now I'm also nonpartisan. Will your principles remain the same? I mean, you've got a voting record. We know how you generally vote on major issues. I think a lot of voters want to see some pushback against the dominant party in your state in Washington, D.C. Are you going to change how you approach governing, or are you just saying I don't want to apply a partisan label to myself anymore?

Yeah, I mean, I think I've always approached my role in an independent way and have always, you know, as you allude to, I've tried to hold folks accountable where necessary in D.C., but also in Sacramento and to push back against the, you know, the failed policies from the political class in my state. And so I've always said, you know, I answer to my constituents first and foremost and that I'll be an independent voice from my district. So I think this reflects those principles. Let's talk about a few things that Gavin Newsom has done and said just recently, including he was giving one of his endless parade of interviews. And he said in that interview that the really high-tax states are Texas and Florida, not California. And it's a myth that California is a high-tax state compared to Texas and California. What drugs do you think he might be on and can I get some? I don't know if you want any guy, to be honest with you. It's going to make you sound or talk or think like Gavin Newsom. I actually went through when he's been making this claim for years and debunked it in great detail the way that he is using completely false comparisons, comparing apples to oranges. You know, we don't have time to go through all of it right now. Suffice it to say that it is completely ridiculous. that California, if you look at any objective measure, has the highest tax burden in the entire country. And by the way, that applies to people who make a lot of money. We have the highest tax rate for the high tax brackets, but also to people who, you know, don't make a lot of money who are, you know, forced to pay the highest gas tax in the country, for example, which, you know, is a very regressive. form of taxation, and is why we have the highest level of poverty in the country in California. So there has been this ongoing effort now for Gavin Newsom to kind of try to reinvent both himself and reality. They're even spending $19 million in taxpayer dollars on this nationwide PR campaign to rehabilitate California's image. But, you know, the facts just are what they are. He's trying to ask us not to believe official data. I want to talk about the governor's race out there because there's a primary coming up, I believe, in June. And the jungle primary system that has been adopted out in California says that the top two vote getters, if no one gets a majority, and often no one gets a majority because there's so many people running, the top two vote getters would then advance to the runoff in the general election. And we've had circumstances where two Democrats ended up facing each other in a general election. That's how Kamala Harris, for example, was elected to the U.S. Senate. But what's interesting is if you look at some of the polling right now out there, the top two...

finishers, at least in these polls, are both Republicans. Now, you add them up and they're in the 30s. It's not like this is some giant red waves sweeping the state, but under the system, if those polls were to be borne out, you could have two Republicans, number one and number two, advancing to a runoff, and California would then elect a Republican governor. Now, I am a bit cynical about this. My guess, Congressman, is that... If there's a real danger of that, the Democrats who dominate the state are going to force people, maybe even almost at gunpoint to get out of the race, to try to consolidate, to make sure that that nightmare scenario doesn't play out. I also wonder if it does play out, and you've got two Republicans going to the general. against each other, could they actually try to rewrite the rules of elections in the state in the interim? Like, I don't even put that past them. They rewrite rules all the time when they feel like they need a political benefit. What do you make of that dynamic right now? Is there any chance, because it is kind of funny to at least think about, is there any chance that the Democrats get hoisted by their jungle primary petard statewide? Cheers to America's 250th birthday. Get 20% off your first purchase at Fox Newswineshop.com with code FM Radio 20. 20%. 20% discount excludes wine club offers and cannot be combined with any other promotion. Expires July 31st, 2026. Must be 21 order to order to order. Please drink responsibly. Yeah, it's a very interesting situation for rewriting the rules. I'm trying to think of that even be possible. They basically have to do a special election immediately and change it. And then I don't think it'd be possible. Even, you know, although with Prop 50, we didn't think that was possible. I put nothing past them. They could just do it and then have this California Supreme Court say it's fine. I am that cynical about it where I think that they could actually go about doing it in a very corrupt illegal way and get away with it. But maybe not. Anyway, go ahead. Yeah, I know. It's an interesting thought. So, yeah, this dynamic is a product of a few things. Of course, we have the top two primary, which, you know, over the years has shown that it leads to some sometimes odd outcomes and opens the door to all kinds of gamesmanship. Secondly, you have the sort of high-profile Democrats who were thinking of running decided not to run. First Kamala Harris and the lieutenant governor and then this guy of Rick Caruso who's worth billions of dollars. the Attorney General, and several others, who might have Alex Padilla was considered, but who might have kind of cleared the field or at least consolidated the big share of the vote. They also took a pass, so you kind of have the JV squat out there. And no one is really very well known or is broken away from the pack. And then you also have this, you know, asymmetrical number of candidates where you have, you know, like eight or so on one side. two on the other. And so, yeah, from like a strictly mathematical point of view, if you split 60-some percent eight ways and, you know, high 30s, maybe 40 percent two ways, it's very possible you end up with the two Republicans in the top two. I tend to agree with your instinct, which is that there would be some dramatic intervention, which actually you've already sort of seen the beginnings of. They've started doing like a weekly poll now to see how close to reality.

or how much of a risk this is. So you never know. I think it'll be very interesting to see how this plays out. But, you know, we couldn't do a lot worse for governor than we have right now. I think that's right, although the top Democrats are Katie Porter and Eric Swalwell. So maybe it could get worse in California. I believe, I actually believe in California, worse is possible if they keep making the same decisions with less and less impressive people. I guess we'll see. Speaking of the current governor, there is a very interesting controversy right now. involving a bridge, a wildlife bridge to nowhere. We've covered the boondoggle of high-speed rail on this show multiple times. You and I have talked about it, for example, billions and billions and billions of dollars wasted, huge over budget. long overdue program. It was supposed to be done. This whole train system was supposed to be done six years ago for a fraction of the now bloated budget and they're nowhere close to actually getting trains up and running. I don't think they've laid any track yet still. Then there's a microcosm version of that at LAX where they're years overdue for a local at LAX train system. It's way over budget. It's three or four years late. It might not be ready. By the World Cup, that's coming out there. So that's another example of like, you know, the train to nowhere mess. Here is the wildlife bridge to nowhere. New York Post. In 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom broke ground on the Wallace Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, Wawak, a project featuring an overpass for animals atop 10 lanes of the 101 freeway in Southern California. At the ceremony in 2022, Gavin Newsom boasted that the state had committed $54 million. He promised to complete the job with another $10 million before seeming to hedge on whether that final sum would do the trick. Officials projected a 2025 completion date for the overpass and estimated that the entire project would cost $92 million, some of it coming from private... philanthropists well nearly four years after the ceremony the bridge is past due the project is some 21 million dollars over budget and what was supposed to be the world's largest wildlife crossing has become a jobs program for environmentalists where it's still just sitting there incomplete and it's not actually up and running yet And the woman who's in charge of the program, who is some left winger with no relevant experience, said that actually being tens of millions of dollars over budget, quote, is not that bad. And then blame Donald Trump for the hold up and the overages.

This seems like yet another example of, sadly, your state, which has been capable of amazing things in its history, being apparently unable to do almost anything under the current leadership and regulatory scenario and regime. Well, yeah, exactly right. And, you know, Gavin Newsom has said that California was the original Doge in the U.S. project like this. So it is, you know, it's just so depressing because this is not any sort of, you know, unusual example. I think that actually, you know, as sort of outrageous as this is as easy it is to mock as sort of spectacularly as it puts. the waste and incompetence of our state on display. I think what's sadder is just when it comes to like the government's failure to actually do the nuts and bolts sort of things that government is supposed to do, like building roads where we have the highest gas tax in the country, yet just about the worst roads in the country. And it's much more expensive to build here than anywhere else. So, you know, but I think that... These examples sort of are helpful in the sense that they really give people a real window into exactly how our government is not looking for them. And then Gavin Newsom's social media team and their busy little bees, right? They do a lot of spinning, not so much successful governing, but a lot of like social media trolling. They then went online and Googled some images of what appeared to be non-completed bridges or bridges to nowhere in places like Florida. And in some cases, it actually cropped the image to say, oh, look, here's Florida. Is this even a real place to try to say, look, this happens everywhere. And in these states that conservatives love, it happens there too. And the internet responded by saying, no, actually, you cropped out of that photo the fully complete brand new infrastructure that is in the shot, actually. that rendered the old bridge no longer operable. The point that you're making is exactly the opposite. Florida got this done and you're pretending like Florida has the same problem that you're being mocked for. Is this just really incompetent staffing or are they lying on purpose? I'm sure it's both. I mean, they have absolutely no problem. In fact, this $19 million propaganda campaign that I mentioned before, like the whole point is just to lie to people and tell them that, you know, the homelessness and the crime and the unemployment and the poverty in California aren't as bad. as we all know to be the case. So, you know, there's a account that he has, this trolling account, the Gavin Newsom Press account, or whatever it is. I mean, they constantly are trolling me, and they've been caught by sort of neutral third-party media lying on numerous occasions in these posts. They had one recently where they accused me of lying about high-speed rail. It literally said, Representative Kiley continues to lie about California High Street Trail. And so I said, all right, fine, you know, take me for a ride on the train right now.

and I will have that I'm wrong. Yeah, choo-choo, all aboard. Oh, wait, there's not even track. There's not even track after, you know, 17 years, $17 billion. They recently held a big thing, a big hoop loss surrounding entering the track-laying phase. Yes, entering the track-laying phase. Like it was a victory. The thing was supposed to be done six years ago. Right. No, exactly. It was supposed to be completed, L.A. to San Francisco in 2020. And now they're saying it will never be L.A. to San Francisco. It'll be smaller city to smaller city far away from L.A. and San Francisco. And that might be done by like 2040. It is amazing. And this was like a big look at us, chest thumping, triumphal thing from Gavin Newsom, just completely characteristically shameless. I do want to ask you finally, Congressman, about these revelations or allegations against Cesar Chavez. who has had this legendary standing on the left in this country within the Democratic Party. Joe Biden had a bust of him in the Oval Office, for example. He's seen as this great champion of workers and immigrants. Well, the New York Times actually has put out a story quoting multiple now women who say that Cesar Chavez was actually a serial. abuser of young girls, sexual abuser of young girls with all sorts of very sordid allegations against him. Seems like a lot of this was swept under the rug during his life. He is this larger than life now figure and icon within lefty politics. There are many roads named after him, schools awkwardly named after him, given the alleged crimes against children. I see that the California legislature is now starting to look at renaming some of these things. Maybe they shouldn't rename it after, I don't know, Jeffrey Epstein, if this is what we're going for. But this is a pretty significant development about someone who is widely celebrated on the left. Are they going to start striking his name off of school building? and elsewhere because of this? I would expect so. They're already changing the name of the holiday, it looks like, or at least taking a step to do that. But it's incredibly disturbing, the allegations that have come out, and it's really well researched, least in the times. And so, you know, of course, the next question is going to be, who all knew about this? And, you know, why didn't they speak up sooner as, you know, the suffering of his victims was essentially, you know, pushed under the rug, and they were silenced for all these years. Do you think it's possible that he was protected in his child predations because of his politics and because his actions might be damaging to the left? People who champion women's rights and that sort of thing and like to talk about, you know, equity and justice, they protected? you know, a predator for political reasons? Well, that's what, that's exactly what Dolores Hortez said. I mean, she's one of his victims, and at least that's what she's saying. And she said that, you know, this is for the last 32 years, she didn't want to demoralize the cause by speaking out about this. But, you know, she's sort of an unusual case because she was one of the leaders and one of the victims here. But, you know, there are plenty of other victims, it appears.

who didn't have the kind of voice that she had and were denied the justice that they deserved. And yeah, I don't know that that can be justified, you know, however worthy the cause might be as some sort of calculation. I think it's pretty perverse. It reminds me, actually, of when Senator Ted Robert F. Kennedy Jr. died, there was some columnist who wrote a piece saying maybe the fact that he killed a woman and got away with it, which you can look up. Look up Chappaquittick and Ted Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. It's absolutely true. His behavior was astonishingly scandalous. But the argument from a lefty opinion leader when he died was maybe that getting away with killing that woman was worth it, given the left-wing things he was able to achieve in the Senate on abortion and beyond. Mary Joe Capekney, the victim in that case, was unavailable for comment. In this case... I think maybe inconveniently for the left, some of the victims, allegedly, of Cesar Chavez, are available for comment and are now speaking out. It's a story that we will follow here. Congressman Kevin Kiley, now an independent of California, joining us on Guy Benson. Congressman, thank you. You bet. Thanks for having me. That was yet another Guy Benson bite. For full episodes of Guy Benson, go to Guy Benson.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

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