There is a narrative that is happening right now, and that is that you and the people in California, specifically those that are affected by these wildfires, should not be talking about politics. Should not be talking about holding politicians accountable because there's just too much suffering going on. Should not be looking at the facts of what actually happened with these wildfires, why they happened, and was their government mismanagement because if you do that, well, you're not a very nice person.
The media, by the way, is not asking questions.
And I tweeted out something earlier today that a lot of people got angry over on the left, and I'm going to read you the tweet right now because I think it's actually an important one. And what I said was is I said, if Ron DeSantis, we're the governor and just one fire hydrant ran out of water during a massive fire, the media would call it hydrant gait and demand a congressional investigation the truth. They would also be blaming DeSantis or Trump or anybody else in this situation if they were in charge in California with people's deaths, and they would be saying people are dying, and they would be demanding that they resign.
But what is the media doing right now?
The media is doing everything they can to not have that conversation.
I'll give you a great example.
Justin Trudeau, who has nothing to do with California, he is not an American leader, was on Jake Tapper's show. And this just shows you how much Jake Tapper sucks at his job, Like, why on the hell would you have him on.
To talk about the wildfires.
This is literally a leader who just resigned in another country, and as there are five major wildfires that are that are zero percent contained in Los Angeles and and this is massive, like looks like a nuclear destruction of this beautiful place. He has on Trudeau, a leader in Canada who's disgraced, who has just resigned, and has a conversation with him about the wildfires. It makes no sense except for the fact that you don't want to hold the people accountable that made the decisions that allowed for this to happen.
Now, I want to be clear, I don't think that.
I should hold back at all, and I don't think I should wait for the fires to go out before I start asking questions. I think right now is the time to start asking those questions and most importantly, demanding answers, because this is exactly how democrats get away with this. No one's willing to point the finger and ask questions and place blame, and they protect all these leaders at all costs, every single time something happens. And if you don't believe me, look at what happened when we pulled out of Afghanistan.
No one was fired.
When we pulled out of Afghanistan, the disaster that cost people their lives, no one was fired. After we saw the incompetency play out on TV live on TV. Nobody at the Pentagon was fired. Nobody at the State Department, no one at the White House. No one was held accountable for that. And my point is, when there are things that are happening, it is okay to ask questions while they're happening, while the spotlight is on what's happening. You do not wait till the spotlight moves to another story. You ask questions. Now, CNN doing everything they can, however, to protect those in charge. So like, all right, let's bring out a guy from Canada that has no say so in this Who's disgrace, and let's ask him about the wildfires and you want to know, by the way, what he said exactly what I would expect from Trudeau. They're doing exactly what Democrats in California are doing right now that are in charge. They're blaming these fires, by the way, not on arsonists. And we know now that some of these fires were in fact started by arsonists. We have seen multiple calls come into nine to one of people setting fires in California over the last several days. It's it's not a conspiracy theory, it's a reality. No one wants to talk about that because what.
Do they want to blame. They want to blame climate change.
And why did they have Trudeau on CNN while there's these five major wildfires that are destroying LA and some of them were arson why did.
They have them on?
Because they want to blame somebody else. They don't want to blame the Democrats. They want to blame climate change, which by default means blame Republicans.
Before I get into the funeral, and before I get into what's going on with you back in your home country, I do want to ask you know, our country in the world really is watching these horrible fires in Los Angeles. Canada has a lot of experience with similar conflagrations. I know that you have been offering resources to the people of California and Los Angeles.
What advice could you offer them?
Well, I think unfortunately, over the past years, we've seen it get far worse, and we've seen wildfire is increasingly encroaching on urban areas, and that's an interface fire where we're having to train up more local municipal firefighters to deal with wildfires in a way that we never had before. I've been back and forth texting with Governor Newsom. We've offered a tremendous amount of equipment they're already accepting. There's expertise, there's things that we're having to do to deal with together as we of course respond to these fires, but also know that climate change means they're going to get steadily worse, and we have to keep stepping up on fighting climate change too.
A lot of people out there.
Might say, what does climate change have to do with this?
Explain Well, when the summers get drier, when weather gets hotter, when weather patterns shift, Communities that were built in a place that you never saw fires are suddenly seeing fires much more frequently. There's a shift in everything that means even what we see now is going to just get worse and worse and worse over the coming decades if we're not serious about our emissions and looking for ways to protect our future generations.
It is unbelievable the propaganda right there coming from CNN. As all this has happened, they're not asking any questions now, the questions that CNN should be asking, by the way, on behalf of the American people is the same question that was asked of Governor Newsom when a woman wearing a mask ran up to Gavin Newsom on the streets when she saw him, and she said this to Gavin Newsom, Listen carefully. This is a citizen. I don't know if she's conservative or liberal. I don't care. She is an American citizen. She's a citizen in California. She's a citizen there where this where the fires are happening, and she sees the governor on the street. And listen to what she says. This is what the media should be doing. Governor, you got a second.
Governor.
Governor, I live here.
Governor, that was my daughter's school.
Governor, please tell me where you're gonna I'm not going to hurt on my promise.
I'm literally talking to the President right now to specifically answer the question of what we can do.
For you and your daughter? Can I hear it? Can I hear your call? Because I don't believe it? I'm sorry? Can I there's literally I've tried five times. That's why I'm walking around to me. Why is the President not taking your call? Because it's not going through? Why I have to get cell service?
Let's get it, let's get it. I want to be here when you call the President.
I appreciate I'm doing that right now, and it's to immediately get reimbursements, individual.
Assistance, and to help you on with death is looking for I'm so sorry, especially for your daughter.
I have four kids.
Everyone who went to school there, they lost their homes.
They lost two homes because they were living in one and building another.
Cather, please tell me, tell me what are you going to do with the president.
Right now, we're getting we're getting the resources to help rebuild.
Why is there no daughter in the hydrantscopy? That's all? Literally? Is it going to be different next time? It has to be has to be. What are you going to do to fill the hydrants? I would fill them up personally. And you know that I.
Would fill up the hydrants myself, but.
Would you do that? I wouldn't do whatever I can, but you're not.
I see the Do you know there's water dripping over there?
Governor?
There's water coming out there? You can use it. I appreciate it.
I'm going to make the call to address everything I can right now, including making sure people.
To make sure you can. Can I have an opportunity to at least tell people you're doing what you're saying you're doing. Can somebody have a contact? Can I have your contact right now?
This is a woman on the streets that doesn't believe that the governor's doing his job.
Why was there no water in the hydrance? I'm trying to figure that out.
The questions that should be asked, and I put out a tweet with this the questions they should be asked, and many of them you can answer. You just have to look at their policies. Why was there not water in the hide well? Probably because they didn't fill up the reservoirs. And why do they not fill up the reservoirs because they destroyed dams intentionally and they decide to push water into the ocean, and they chose smelt fish over humans. What's even more shocking about what we're witnessing in California is the media says now is not the time to ask these questions. The reality is, yes, it is. They destroyed the dams intentionally. They refuse to do controlled burns intentionally, They refused to do forest management intentionally, they refuse to clear dead trees and brush intentionally. And they're gay fire chief, which, by the way, I don't care that she's gay. What I do care about is that the gay fire chief prioritize being gay and diversity equity inclusion over protecting people's lives, many of.
Them, by the way, which I'm sure are gay.
That's the irony in all this, Like the I don't care if you're gay fire chief, I don't care.
I care that you.
Thought it was your job to have a three year plan to make sure you get a bunch of trends and gay and all the DEI hiring in there, instead of understanding that your job.
Is to fight fires. That's what I care about.
Make no mistake, the fiery destruction of people's homes and their lives in Malibu is a direct result of politics. It is a direct result of the politicians in charge in Los Angeles and California. And by the way, if we're gonna be honest about this, they're all Democrats. But the media says, now is not the time. So a woman has to run up to the governor and do her job. And then the media says, no, no, We're going to talk to Trudeau, a guy from Canada that's disgraced, and he's going to lecture us about reducing our missions. Remember Representative Eric Swalwell who slept with a Chinese spy, Feng Fang bang bang.
Remember that guy.
Yeah, MSNBC putting him on TV to talk about this.
What did he say? Listen carefully.
You are both from northern California, and the trauma and the scars and the tragic earthquakes and fires of the early nineties are still everywhere you look. It takes not months or years, but it can take decades to completely rebuild from catastrophes like this. What can you promise the people of California in terms of being able to obtain fire insurance, something that was difficult before this tastrophe.
So I promise, first and foremost to be compassionate and to be an adult about this, and to ignore people who have conducted themselves like they belong at the kids table on this, who are in elected office, but to focus on the immediate needs. Where are your kids going to go to school? How do you get the resources you need to rebuild? What's the reimbursonment to be for local communities from the federal government so that all of the infrastructure can be built immediately. And then of course the questions that need to be answered is to you know, what can we do in the future to make sure the response is even better. But in many ways this is an act of God. Eighty to ninety mile per hour winds in January in southern California is unseasonable and unpredictable. But we always can be better in our emergency response. But right now it's not a time, you know, I think for finger pointing.
It's a time to think.
The firefighters, the police officers, the first responders, and the community and then act as quickly as we can to get people hopefully back to what they felt us home.
Translation, we don't want any finger pointing right now, because we know the fingers will be pointing.
At us and in our policies. That's what we know.
So let's go through the facts of why this was preventable. These southern California fires were preventable tragedy full stop. You want to know how bad it is in California when it comes to arsonists. There were more than thirteen thousand, nine hundred and nine fires started by homeless individuals last year alone in California. Did you know that they knew this was a real chance that this could happen. They knew it was a real problem. They knew that if these Santa Ana wins shifted in the right direction, that what would happen.
Here is exactly what was going to happen.
And what did they decide to do because they're obsessed with, I don't know, like some little random fish or some bird. They had zero forest management. Not only did they have zero forest management, the mayor out there cut the fire department funding by seventeen million plus dollars. Firefighters, by the way, in California were fired for not getting vaccinated because that mattered more than saving people's lives. California launched a DEI Bureau instead of focusing on training because they cared more about if a trainee was shooting water out of a hose than they did if it was the most qualified person to be a fireman or woman.
There was no water in the fire hydrants.
And the mayor and the governor knows this because California purposely didn't fill their reservoirs like they should have to prepare for this type of fire, which they had been warned about for years. What they did do, though, is every time they had a chance to go woke, they took it. You may not know this, but they were cheering themselves on in liberal California, the leaders, the mayor, the fire chief who's gay, the governor. Because in La they gave firefighting equipment to Ukraine in twenty twenty two. You know what we saw in video yesterday. We saw firemen using women's purses.
This is not a.
Joke to fill up water from their truck, run over to little fires and dump water out of persons.
They didn't have buckets.
You think that firefighting equipment they gave to Ukraine in twenty twenty two could have been used in this massive fire. I'm going to go out and the way Lemon say yes, And you want to know how many warnings there were about these fires. Big insurance companies left California due to two things. Number one, over regulation and number two poor fire prevention. Slash management is how they described it. Big insurance companies looked at these policies as woke agenda policies, and they said, yeah, this didn't make any sense because you guys aren't doing any forestry management. You aren't doing control burns, you're not clearing brush. You guys are sitting there with all the kinneling you can possibly create for.
Something like this to happen.
So big insurance companies, who don't necessarily play politics, just looked at the scenario that was created by the radical lefties in California and they said, we're out of here. Which goes back to the final point that I made earlier today. Not everything is a conspiracy. It's called liberal incompetent. I want to say that again, not everything is a conspiracy. A lot of this can be simply explained by calling it what it is, and that is liberal incompetence. So as you sit there and you look at this and you say, well, maybe now's not the time to talk about it, absolutely now is the time to talk about it. These fires that are ravaging Los Angeles are estimated cause over fifty billion in damages. By the way, maybe we should stop sending money to Ukraine right now when the people who are American citizens need this money to rebuild their lives in California. The other reason why now is the time to talk about is because it actually I'm just gonna be honest it this is me off that as a taxpayer, now I got to pay and it's gonna be billions and billions of dollars. We're gonna give a bail out to California because of their incompetency, and there's gonna be a huge check that's going to be written because of their incompetency, and you and I as taxpayers, are going to pay for it.
Is going to cost us.
Now when you take that money, By the way, we're going to have to borrow that money because we don't have the money because we have trillions in debts. So we're going to borrow that money. We're going to pay interest on that money, and it's going to put us into even more debt. And the people were rewarding for their incompetency are people just like the Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who was on a trip to Ghana when the fire engulfed large portions of the city. The same woman the cut nearly twenty million from the city's budget for fire services for the current fiscal year, and now it's going to cost us billions of dollars. By the way, just so you understand the politics of this, the mayor of Los Angeles, Miss Bass, proposed even higher cuts to fire than what was accepted at the end at her west Side current proposal in April of twenty twenty four, Bass purportedly wanted twenty three million in cuts to the fire department, quote sick magnificantly. The proposal, describe by Bass as a reset, included sixty five million and cuts to her signature inside Safe Homelessness program.
So we're spending more on that than we're spending on fire prevention.
That would be an increase of more than one hundred and thirty eight million for the Los Angeles Police Department and a decrease of twenty three million for the LA Fire Department. Well, you get what you pay for, folks. There's also another aspect to this whole conversation, that is, right, when bad things happen in theory. People come together, right, you have heroes that come out. We hear sad stories about people. There's a man that died with a water hose in his hand trying to save his own house.
You see people that have saved like baby Deer.
In the last couple of hours that have come out on TV, We've seen people that have been pushing the elderly from old folks homes away from the blaze as embers are flying through the air on the street. Right, there's heroes that come out of this. But you also have a problem in La. You have a breakdown in society that's happening before our very eyes. There are a lot of people now that are taking advantage of this opportunity. Is looters are coming out in large numbers. Now, why would that happen? I can tell exactly why. Because you have a godless, lawless society in La. I'm going to say that again because I didn't say it by accident, and there's people to say, well, Ben, that's just me to say that right now, No, it's not. This is exactly when you have this conversation. There is godlessness and lawlessness.
In La. They don't prosecute people for breaking into stores.
We've seen this. We look at all the stores in California that keep closing. They have to lock up everything at CBS and Walgreens because everything people walk in and steal. We've seen the videos of people walking into stores and just grab whatever the hell they want. They walk out, and they're not prosecuted because if it's under nine hundred and something dollars, they don't care out there. And now all of a sudden, the La County District Attorney is issuing quota warning to potential looters.
Well, you better not do that.
You created a society bro where you didn't prosecute people for stealing in broad daylight in the stores, and you let them go because of bail reform in prison reform, and you did this. So now instead of people saying like hey, everybody, chill out, no stealing, we'll tell people.
Let's try to say we lives. There's looters out there, like hey man, this is ours for the take, and let's go get it. Let's get into break into city.
These nights homes are going to burn down anyway, right, there's justification for it. Hell, there's probably be like, oh the lord bless me during that fire. I got me a big screen TV, a couple of laptops, some iPads, got me some guns, stole me some furniture. I got some good stuff. The Lord blessed me. The house goun burned out. Anyway, right there, I can hear the justification of the criminals that are involved in this. And now Nathan Hutcham, Hutchman or whatever the hell's name is, the LA County District Attorney is out there on TV, which also, by the way, makes me laugh. Do you think there's a bunch of people in LA that are looting right now that are watching you on TV? No, because they're out there looting. It's like, well, we're going to tell them they better not loot. Good luck with that, bro. You create a society where no one's out accountable for any of their actions. In LA, you can be an illegal, you can be homeless, you can be a squatter. So the worst squatting we've seen of houses in the country are coming out of LA.
You can walk into.
A CBS at Walgreens, or a department store, a Saxo Fifth Avenue, a Macy's, whatever it is, and you can steal whatever the hell you want, and you're not gonna be prosecuted. You created a lawless environment where now you're shocked, and I think these Hollywood people are like truly shocked, like they cannot believe that people are just stealing right now and trying to steal during this time. I totally can It makes complete sense to me. Every day you let them get away with it. This is the big one, this is the Super Bowl. Go into anyhow, steal whatever the hell you want. And now they're like, well, you can't do that. Now you're drawing the line. Listen to him, plead with the criminals, Please don't do this.
Nathan, Why was it important for you to put out to the world that Instagram.
You know, you have a very big job right now.
We watched you earlier on your news conference talking about looters. You're going to take a very heavy hand when it comes to that. But maybe sharing I guess that it's affecting everybody, including you and your family.
So there's I thought it was very important to make it clear that I was there, I was a bearing witness right in the middle of the fire zone, that it affected my sister, you know, her entire family. I've personally been evacuated along with thousands of others. There's over one hundred and eighty thousand people who have been evacuated in Los Angeles County.
And I want to also make.
Clear to anyone who was thinking about taking advantage of it for their own personal illegal profit, and those looters, those scammers, those people who are going to do praying on vulnerable people who are looking to rebuild their lives, that they will actually be arrested, they will be prosecuted, and we will seek maximum punishment against that. Those people who want to take advantage of this tragedy are despicable, and I wanted to say in fair warning out to them right now so there's no misunderstanding about how they will be treated if and when they get caught, prosecuted and punished.
I don't I'm sorry, Like, I don't believe you.
If I'm one of these criminals out there, I'm laughing in your face because I'm like, dude, you guys can't even put out a fire. You can't even get water into hoses. You guys can't even do that. Like, do you really think right now if you are a professional louter or an amateur out there, you are worried about what that DA prosecutor just said. I'll go to another example. Let's go back and again. It just signals the reality. The Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley, she boasted about being the first female and LGBTQ fire chief in the LA Fire Department.
And what did she do.
She promote a culture of DEI in her hiring priority in a three she called it a three year initiative. A three year initiative, she said she wanted to create a supporting and promoting a culture that values diversity, inclusion, equity while striving to meet and exceed the expectations of the communities. As Chief Crowley's priorities, you get what you pay for. You push all this woke ideology and this is what you get. And by the way, Joe Biden just authorized five hundred million in aid to California and who lost everything in these fires? Just kidding, just kidding, Sorry, that was for Ukraine. My bad so far. Joe Biden is not guaranteed any certain dollar amount of aid to Californias. That could change. But the time I'm taping this, that's what's going on.
We had time to.
Give another five hundred million in a to Ukraine, not California, but to Ukraine. Here's something else you might want to know. We finally have a clip of the President of the United States of America. I'm going to play this for you because it just came in. This just came in. Here is Joe Biden. I'm going to hear this with you right now for the first time today.
For Secretary of Defense also authorized five hundred wildfire ground cleary personnel from the Defense Department, and I've directed the Department to continue working with covenduson to identify additional resources that can be provided for public safety and security. And we've secured additional firefighters and firefighting aircraft from our ally and Canada as well. I also want everyone in southern California to know we're going.
To keep at it. We're sticking with this.
We expect there may be a temporary break in the winds, but in some areas the winds are likely to continue well in the next week, and so we're going to continue to sending everything, literally every resource we can find that's appropriate to help the governor and the first responders. Second, we're focus on helping people who have been displaced where in many cases lost everything. You've reported on you're seeing the homes burned to the ground, whole areas have burned to the ground, large areas. They've been displaced, and they've lost everything. As I said, since the fire started, FEMA has been working with state the state to help residents get sheltered, groceries, prescription and other critical goods like baby formula. We're also sent FEMA Director Criswell to Los Angeles to manage our response on the ground. She was supposed to be on this call, but we have a deputy here because she is out in the field with the governor right now surveying what's going on.
This guy's no clue what's going on. Quote. I want everyone's out of California to know we're going to keep at it. We're staying with this. Like what is that? What does that even mean? Like, we're gonna.
Stick with it, boys, We're gonna We're gonna stick with it, letting the fires be zero percent contained. Like I'm being serious, what does that actually mean? Pacific Palisades property owner went on TV earlier today. His name is Steve Bardak, and you know what he said. He said, we as residents we made a mistake. Listen, I think.
Los Angeles made a mistake. Karen Bass does not serve the interest of LA residents. U Some of the decisions are nonsensical, such as cutting seventeen point six million dollars from LA Fire Department's budget but instead prioritizing homelessness where roughly half of the funds of one point three billion dollars was not even spent. And it just doesn't make any sense. You know, where are her priorities, what is her strategy? Where is the plan she she doesn't have one. We need a proven leader with that is effective, that understands priorities, that understands business, like Rick Fruso.
By the way, you want to know why they can't do this job. They didn't sign up to do this job, folks. Gavin Newsome didn't sign up to be governor. He signed up to be a Hollywood celebrity. Karen Bass didn't sign up to actually be a mayor. She signed up for the glitzy parties and the celebrity handshakes and the woke ideology where everybody walk around say you're doing so great, How many trans people got in your office?
Now, good for you?
How many gay people got in your office? How many lesbians you got hired? Oh?
I got me a new.
Lesbian up in here, is gonna be in charge of fire department. Yeah, she's gonna get some more lesbians up in here, and gave people in some trainees.
They didn't sign up to actually serve the people, folks.
They signed up to be famous with celebrities in a city where they get to go to all the fun, glitzy parties. By the way, in these types of disasters, this is where the.
Governors earned their paycheck.
It's also, by the way, where they earn their paycheck by making sure they do everything to make sure that days like this don't happen and fires like this don't happen. And notice they're still not telling you the truth that a lot of these fires are being lit by individuals. Another Malibu resident started crying during an interview with NBC News, saying, we lost everything we owned. I hope they learn from this, I really do. Adam Carolla slamming democrats. You may know him the Adam Carolla Show. This is a guy that's a comedian. He's a former liberal who's now just sensical. Here's what he said.
You guys all voted for Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, who all voted for Gavin Newsom, And now you get what you get.
Oh, now that your house is on fire, Well.
Now you're thinking about something else. Now you want to know what's going on. What's going on around here? All these people who were deep blue Democrats are now going to have to pull a permit to rebuild. And when they start running into the bureaucracy in the red tape, they're gonna start going nuts and they're gonna vote for Rick Caruso next time because they want to get That's all Trump says, We're gonna we're gonna pull back the regulations.
By the way, he's right, you guys all voted for this, But now that your house is on fire, you start thinking about something else.
I couldn't agree with him more. And is all this is happening.
Just remember a lot of this started with a fish, a fish that they wanted to save, a little fish, And California burned itself to the ground to save a little fish and got rid of dams. By the way, Pride Magazine, Yes it's a real article. Yes this is a real headline. Pride magazine. Their headline today was this amid Palisades fire, Comma, los Angeles' first LGBTQ plus fire chief is proving lesbians get it done. I have nothing else to say. Make sure you share this podcast with your family or friends wherever you are. I'll see you back here tomorrow