EZRA LEVANT ｜ EXCLUSIVE： Los Angeles ABANDONED residents with disastrous wildfire response
Episode Stats
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Summary
Rebel News' Ezra LeVant and his crew cover the fires in Los Angeles, Jasper, Alberta and Maui, and ask President Trump a key question about the recovery efforts in the Pacific Palisades.
Transcript
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Hello, my friends. One of our favorite guests on Rebel News is Joel Pollack, the senior editor at
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large of Breitbart.com. Well, he's used to reporting on the news, but recently he's been
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in the news. His house was in the middle of Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles when the firestorm broke
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through. And he actually put one of the key questions to President Trump about the recovery
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of the Pacific Palisades. We had a one-day visit with Joel in Los Angeles. I scooted out there and
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got right back to Toronto as soon as I could. Fascinating and terrifying story. You'll see
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that ahead. And that's why I want you to get the video version of this podcast. You know, really,
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it's a visual story to see the devastation, to see how close Joel's house came. It's a story of
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pictures, not just words. So please go to rebelnewsplus.com. Click subscribe. It's eight bucks a
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rocklink with a C. Info at rocklink.com. All right, here's today's podcast.
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Tonight, what's the truth about the fires in Los Angeles, in Jasper, Alberta, and in Maui?
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It's February 7th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
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Rebel News is across the country. As you know, Drea Humphrey is out there in Vancouver,
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and we have folks all the way out to Montreal, our dear friend Alexa Lavoie. By the way, did
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you see her ask a good question to the Premier of Quebec the other day?
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Just a little ago, how come you don't agree with Premier Smith's idea to build a new oil
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and gas pipeline to diversify our export markets so we are not only trading with America, given
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Trump's terrorist threat? So she said that it would make Canada stronger. Do you believe
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I just answered this question. It's the same thing. We talk about Energy S or GNL. I think
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that we need to have social acceptability, and if Daniel Smith or whoever table projects
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will look at them, but we need to have social acceptability.
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I like the fact that Alexa is out there speaking English and Francais. Of course, we also have
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Avi Amini and a small crew with him in Melbourne. My point is we really focus on Canada. We do
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international things. As you know, we went to the World Economic Forum in Davos for a week,
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went down to the U.S. inauguration to talk to Danielle Smith, but we try and stay focused on
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the big stuff in Canada. That said, I believe that there are things that happen outside this country
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that reflect on Canada, that give us a hint of what's to come. That's why I sometimes visit the
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United Kingdom, because I believe the censorship and the mass immigration and the Islamification of the
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public square is relevant to us, but I'm very conscious when I take days away. So I did something
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last week. I zipped out to see the fire in Los Angeles on the weekend, and then from Los Angeles,
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I took the flight to Maui to see how the fire recovery is doing there, and then I came back,
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and we did that whole thing on the weekend, so I was able not to miss my Canadian duties.
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Maybe I should have taken some more time out there, but I was able to cover the ground well.
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The reason I went there is because I think those three wildfires I described earlier,
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Los Angeles, Jasper, Alberta, and Maui, what do they have in common? Quite a bit, I would say.
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In every instance, it was government failing to prepare by giving in to environmentalism when it
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comes to not clearing the deadwood in the forest, when it comes to emptying reservoirs and dams of
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water, terrible emergency response, and most incredibly, the long-term delays to rebuild
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bureaucracy and permits. I want to show you what we saw in Los Angeles. We had a sort of tour guide
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there, our friend Joel Pollack, who lived right in Pacific Palisades, the neighborhood in LA that
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was torched. Joel's house itself was thankfully not consumed by the flames, but most of the block he
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was on was. We talked to him about the fire itself, and then a neighborhood in Pacific Palisades that
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wasn't touched by fire because it had a different political leader. In the days ahead, I'll take you to
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Maui, our super quick trip there. 18 months since that fire burned out. You will be shocked
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at what is happening there a full year and a half later. Anyways, I wanted to explain what I was doing,
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and I wanted to tell you that we did it in such a way as to not take away from our work in Canada,
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because obviously that's most important. But would you agree with me that learning about how to prevent
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wildfires, destroying property, and learning how to rebuild from wildfires is something we could use
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in Canada too, including in places like Jasper. We really kept our spending low, about $1,000. I mainly
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used my frequent flyer points for this trip, but if you can help cover our out-of-pocket expenses,
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I'd be so grateful. Please do that at TheTruthAboutTheFires.com.
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Ezra Levant here. I'm in Pacific Palisades, which was scorched by wildfire short days ago. This is a
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basketball torched in the backyard of my friend Joel Pollack, who happens to be a resident here. He's
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also the senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com. Joel, you've been taking us through the streets,
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utter devastation. It really feels like a massive bomb went out. Tell me about the day the fire swept
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through your neighborhood. The fire began on the morning of January 7th. We had been warned of extreme
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wind, so I had spent the early part of that morning taking down anything that might blow away. I took down
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my flagpole. I took down my son's baseball net. We've been through some high winds here before.
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In fact, if you see the ficus trees over here to my left, one of the reasons I don't cut them down,
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even though they interfere with the view, is that they are a natural windbreak, and they keep the
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wind off the house. We don't have a very windy climate generally, but there are a few months in
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the winter where you can get these winds called Santa Ana winds that come down from the mountain,
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and when they move through the canyons, they become very strong. So we were preparing,
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and I took my third child to her preschool. I went to the gym, then I went to Starbucks to
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check email, do some work, and I received a text message from my nanny who was walking our fourth
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child, our baby, and she said that she saw smoke and smelled it, and I started checking social media
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to see what was going on, and the fire was reported to be near the Highlands, which is a neighborhood
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on top of the Pacific Palisades, not too far from here. I wrote back to my wife and the nanny and
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said, we have to pack our bags. They are going to evacuate us. I knew from past experience with
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reporting on fires and reporting on water that this was a close fire, and I didn't expect that the fire
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would actually reach this area, but I thought it was possible that we would be in the evacuation
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zone. So we packed up in 15 minutes, and we left, and we managed to avoid the traffic jam that was
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building up on Sunset Boulevard. We took a couple of shortcuts that I know about, and we got onto the
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Pacific Coast Highway, and we evacuated to Santa Monica, where we remain today. But that traffic jam
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became a major problem about half an hour later when residents were stuck in the traffic, and the smoke
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began coming closer and closer and closer, and people abandoned their cars and fled on foot. Blocked the
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roads, the fire department had to bring a bulldozer to move the cars out of the way. Anyway, the wind
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was extreme, not just an ordinary Santa Ana. It was amplified by the jet stream, and it blew flaming
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embers through this neighborhood and began to blow them everywhere. And as you've seen, probably 80% of
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this neighborhood has been destroyed. And when we left, we thought, well, if the house goes up, there's
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nothing we can do about it. We have fire insurance. We are lucky. Our insurance company didn't drop us, but
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many of my neighbors had lost their fire insurance literally in the days before the fire, because
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California has a socialist policy of capping insurance rates, because the California government in its
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benevolent and omniscient wisdom has decided that the price of fire insurance was too high. And therefore, the
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insurance companies started going out of business. They left the state where they dropped their customers. We had our
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policy, but other people either had no insurance or were forced onto the state plan, which is a much
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poorer plan. So we still had our fire insurance. And I just made the peace with the fact that we were
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perhaps going to lose our house. I monitored the progress of the fire overnight. And it seemed to me
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that our house was perhaps just outside the perimeter of the fire. It turns out that was simply coincidence.
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The fire maps online couldn't actually keep up with the spread of the blaze. And nevertheless,
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I checked with a colleague of mine in another news outlet, whether they were letting journalists back
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into the fire zone. This is about 24 hours later, Wednesday morning. I was able to use my press pass
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to come in. I couldn't drive up here because there were downed power lines, but I walked up from where I
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parked a couple blocks away and I found my house still standing, but surrounded by smoke. And this is what I
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found. I found the fence burned portions of the retaining wall outside the fence on fire. I looked
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around the other side of my house. That fence was on fire. My neighbor's fence was on fire. My neighbor's
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trees were on fire. And I started looking for water. There was not enough water pressure in the fire
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hydrants, even for the firefighters. I turned the tap on my garden hose in back, which was closest to the
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flames. Nothing. I went inside my house. I still had my key and I found the vases of flowers that I had given my
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wife over two successive Fridays every Shabbat in our house. I give my wife some flowers. That was the
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water I started with. And then I noticed there was a river of water really flowing in the gutter from
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homes that had been destroyed uphill. So I was able to take the vases and go back and forth, bringing
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water to where the flames were. And then I remembered my son had a bucket of baseballs in the backyard. I
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dumped the baseballs out. I took the bucket. Two guys pulled up in a truck. I didn't know them from
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before. They said, do you need help? I said, yes. They came. We found two more buckets and we had an
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assembly line going. And we put out the fires on these fences, the neighbor's fences, neighbor's
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property. And the other thing is, you asked about my garden hose when we were driving over here.
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I found my garden hose extended over the yard from where it had been kept in the front yard,
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which meant to me that some neighbor or perhaps a firefighter, but somebody, some anonymous person
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had actually taken the hose and had fought the fire before I got here when there was still water.
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That's the kind of community Pacific Palisades really is. It's a community of neighbors helping
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each other. And that's the only reason this house survived. That and probably the ficus trees,
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maybe some topography. We also had a natural fire break here. There's been a lot of debate
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about brush clearance. There wasn't enough brush clearance. Certainly where the fire started,
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there was a lot of brush. But the neighboring property here is owned by the Los Angeles Department
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of Water and Power. And I had actually asked them in the past to cut the grass on their property
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because it is a fire hazard. And they did so. They actually came and they cut the grass and they
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maintained it after I intervened. And so we actually have about 50 meters of clear space
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between us and the next structure. So that probably also helped. But in general, lack of water,
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lack of brush clearance, no police to guide the traffic, no preparation. There was no water in
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the reservoir at the top of the hill. 117 million gallons, almost completely empty, no water available.
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This was an act of God or act of nature. It was a natural disaster. You can't do anything about the
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strength of the wind. We believe it was started by human beings, probably accidentally, but perhaps
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arson. We don't know. There are some things you can't do anything about. We did not, collectively, I mean,
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we as a city, as a community, we did not do the things that we could have done. And our city government
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is to blame and our state government, but especially the city. You know, we met one of your neighbors whose
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house survived. He said he has an insurance policy where the insurance company has their own private
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fire trucks that come because I guess the insurance company does not rely on, they obviously don't
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think they can rely on the city fire trucks. So there were instances of private companies putting out
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fires when the city firefighters couldn't. That's such an unusual, but also such a telling story, isn't it?
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When you drive around Pacific Palisades, there are neighborhoods that were protected by private
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firefighters and private security companies with water tanks, even if they weren't professional
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firefighters. Generally speaking, although some of the damage is random, sometimes you'll find
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two homes that survived and in between them there's a home that didn't. Generally speaking, if you had
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access to firefighters and water, you survived the fire, generally. And you'll see more of that if you go to
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the village and see Rick Caruso's mall, Palisades Village Mall, which survived because he had private
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firefighters and private water tankers. But yes, some of the insurance companies do offer private
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firefighting services, especially when you have wealthy properties that would cause massive losses if
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they burned down. The private firefighters are made available by the insurance companies.
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They just don't want to risk relying on the city. I mean, it's crazy. The water reservoir was empty.
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The mayor, I mean, even before the fires hit, she had decided she was going to go on a sort of a junket
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to Ghana, a country in Africa. Even when it was clear to everyone that the fires were coming,
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she wouldn't call off that trip. I know she was scrummed in a jetway on an airport. Here's a quick
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look at that. Just painful. She wouldn't say a word. Take a look.
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Do you owe citizens an apology for being absent while their homes were burning?
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Do you regret cutting the fire department budget by millions of dollars, Madam Mayor?
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Have you absolutely nothing to say to the citizens today?
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I don't want to make this too partisan, but how can you not say there were decision makers who either
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didn't make a decision at all or made terrible decisions?
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I'm not very happy with her performance. Mostly, I think people just weren't very well prepared for
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the fire, even though it was anticipated that there would be problems.
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There's those that will be held accountable for whatever's happening. Again, there's perhaps
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It's a natural disaster. I think that she did everything that she could. I think that the public
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services have been tremendous. Karen Bass shouldn't have been out of town. They had a lot of warning.
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They haven't filled up the reservoir. The city gave them over $17 million to help the fire department.
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They used it for something else. She's not a bad person, but her response sucked.
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She was out of town. When this was going on, I don't think it was great.
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The public officials were more concerned with DEI and getting people and equity in place in the higher
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branches, but they didn't know how to conduct sweating a city. Their priorities were in the wrong place.
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There's thousands of people who work for L.A. Water and Power. There was no water. There was no power.
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How much of the devastation here could have been stopped with better decision-making by city and state leaders?
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Some amount. We don't know what amount exactly. Certainly, at the origin of the fire on the mountain,
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it is possible that they could have stopped the blaze if they had firefighters pre-deployed.
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They were not pre-deployed because the city did not want to pay overtime.
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They cut the budget to the fire department. The mayor proposed even deeper budget cuts.
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They didn't want to pay overtime. So for the lack of a million dollars for overtime, we have $300 billion of damage.
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They could have put the fire out fairly quickly. Once it got going, it was very difficult.
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As one firefighter told me, you don't fight that kind of fire from the ground. You fight it from the air.
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We couldn't get the assets in the air. We have these wonderful Canadian super scoopers.
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We couldn't put those up because the wind was just too strong.
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But there's no excuse for running out of water before the fire.
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And you were saying it got to a point where firemen stopped coming because there was just no water in the hydrant.
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Well, they would come and they would do what they could.
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But once an attic, for example, would catch a light, they would just leave that property and try to establish another perimeter and another perimeter.
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I mean, you were scooping it out of the gutters with a bucket and a vase. That's crazy.
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Yeah. We had to become our own volunteer fire department.
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It was very interesting because Donald Trump is a man of action.
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They were sitting around the panel and the mayor was being asked by citizens,
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But we are going to move as fast as we can, but we want you to be safe.
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We want you to be back in your homes immediately.
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But the people are willing to clean out their own debris.
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You should let them do it because by the time you hire contractors, it's going to be two years.
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The people are willing to get a dumpster and do it themselves and clean it out.
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There's not that much left. It's all incinerated.
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And, you know, it's just going to take a long time if you...
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You can do some of it, but a lot of these people...
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You'll be on that thing tonight, throwing the stuff away and your site will be...
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So on the one hand, you've got the mayor who didn't give a damn about the fire,
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I think they were talking about 18 months to have the government remove debris.
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And then you've got Donald Trump who's demanding it to happen.
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Trump has made a bit of an impact, but each community is doing the best that they can.
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I think he probably pushed them to act faster than they otherwise would have acted.
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Eventually they would have let people back on, but the city just moves very slowly unless somebody's lighting a fire under them.
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I think that had absolutely nothing to do with it.
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I think that the EPA and all the public safety departments are doing what they need to do to keep people safe.
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If it's a disaster, then it's going to take a long time to clean it up.
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Embarrass them a little bit when they're saying it'll take another week.
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And he's saying, well, why does it need to take another week?
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So they started letting people go back the next day and it, you know, it's worked out okay, I think.
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Is it going to be the mayor, the president, or someone else?
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Because I can't think of two more different people than the DEI woke mayor of L.A.
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Well, I think it's going to have to be Trump because we can't rebuild L.A. without federal funding.
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So the federal government holds the purse strings.
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And what I suggested at that meeting, I proposed that Trump name a special master,
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as they had after the September 11th terror attack, to handle the victim's compensation fund.
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I would like to ask you to follow the 9-11 commission precedent and appoint a special master
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to watch the money, to make sure that every federal dollar that gets spent here
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is spent on fire relief and rebuilding and not on everything else.
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That individual in that case was a guy named Kenneth Feinberg,
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and he made sure the money went to the people who needed it, who were supposed to get it.
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We here in California have lost confidence in our local government and our state government.
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We do not trust Gavin Newsom, our governor, or Karen Bass, our mayor, to spend the money appropriately.
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If you had to put your trust in somebody, you had to pick either or, Trump or Mayor Bass,
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who would you pick to handle the situation better and why?
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Well, I think that, I think I would choose the mayor.
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I mean, I see that there's been some bad publicity.
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Mayor Bass, Trump is completely incompetent, and everything that comes out of his mouth is nonsense.
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I don't think Trump would be particularly good at handling it at the detail level,
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but I think Caruso would be very good at handling it at the detail level.
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He may be outspoken, and he may not speak kindly of people sometimes, but you know what?
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But when it comes to getting things done, he knows how to get it done.
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If I had to pick one of them, it would be Mayor Bass, because she's here.
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It seems like in that town hall meeting in the Palisades,
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Karen Bass was just very quiet and almost afraid of Trump.
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If you give $300 billion to California, they will spend it on homeless shelters.
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Yes, they'll spend it on transgender surgeries, whatever,
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but they're not going to spend it on rebuilding the Pacific Palisades.
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So we want a special master to control every dollar
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that comes from the federal taxpayer to California,
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because as you implied, we pay high taxes in California and get very poor services.
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The federal taxpayer is not going to stand for that treatment.
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It's the government we elected, for better or worse, in California.
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But federal taxpayers are not going to want to play that game.
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And so they're going to want to know that the money they're spending is being spent responsibly.
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Maybe Gavin Newsom is still getting away with it.
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And now they're getting the results of her poor governance.
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And I do think this neighborhood is going to fight to be rebuilt.
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And there's even talk among some people of moving out of L.A. and incorporating as their own city.
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I think that's complicated, probably unlikely, but people are talking about it.
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This neighborhood wants to make sure that we rebuild as soon as possible.
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And what was interesting to my neighbors, I think most of whom didn't vote for Trump, was to see that Trump was on their side.
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Like, do they overcome their Trump derangement syndrome and say...
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You can talk to people here who say, I never voted for him, but he's the reason I'm here today.
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And he's also a builder who understands real estate.
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So he understands intimately the problems that my neighbors are going through.
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To me, everyone's standing in front of their house.
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They want to go to work and they're not allowed to do it.
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And the most important thing is for people to be safe.
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And I think people in this neighborhood may still have their doubts about Donald Trump,
00:25:16.280
but they understand that he's on the side of rebuilding.
00:25:18.740
I really appreciate my congressman advocating for money.
00:25:23.920
But I also understand Americans who are tired of spending money on California and disasters happen.
00:25:30.940
And the California government passes $50 million to oppose your policy.
00:25:35.600
So they have $50 million for that, but not for moving people into rental homes or helping people relocate or rebuild.
00:25:42.320
But before he gives that federal money you're talking about, I think he's going to make some demands in return.
00:25:51.000
Or are they going to say, are they going to be purists and say, we will not accept Trump's money because it comes with strings attached?
00:25:56.460
He didn't make demands here when he was here, but he did make demands when he was in other parts of California when he landed.
00:26:03.420
He said that he wants California to get rid of their current voting system and install voter identification systems to verify the votes.
00:26:12.600
And Trump has said, as a condition of receiving federal money, you're going to upgrade your voting system.
00:26:18.060
What I would also demand is that we change our water policies, our forestry policies, our emergency management services.
00:26:22.420
And Trump was talking about this before, and they all mocked him.
00:26:26.700
I was with the president of Finland, and he said, we have a much different, we're a forest nation.
00:26:33.980
And they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things, and they don't have any problem.
00:26:48.160
When you're dealing with areas near where human beings live, you have to do what the Native Americans actually did,
00:26:54.420
which is to have controlled burns and brush removal so that you can live in harmony with nature.
00:27:00.600
You can't just let it be because there will be extra fuel.
00:27:05.300
There will be parasites like bark beetles that kill trees and so forth.
00:27:11.060
This idea of a pristine environment is nice to have, and we have national parks for that reason.
00:27:16.060
But we also have national forests, and those used to be open to forestry, to logging companies.
00:27:22.900
And they would cut natural fire breaks on logging roads, and they would remove the brush.
00:27:27.520
And California and the West Coast in general has abandoned that.
00:27:31.000
And they've also started to destroy dams, to undo dams.
00:27:38.060
Undoing dams because of indigenous rights and because of the salmon runs that used to run on these wild rivers.
00:27:44.020
There are workarounds for all these things, but they've decided to destroy the dams.
00:27:52.620
Now, they started in the Klamath Basin, which is in northern California.
00:27:57.720
If we tried to do that here, we would all just die of thirst.
00:28:03.140
California needs to get serious about water policy.
00:28:05.240
Let's go see Rick Caruso's mall that survived because he was thinking like a Republican, not a Democrat.
00:28:32.060
Joel, we're about five minutes drive away from your house, Sunset Boulevard, very famous street.
00:28:39.520
And back there, it doesn't look like anything's been touched by flame, whereas behind us, absolutely scorched, nothing standing but the concrete and brick.
00:28:53.500
So, this is the heart of the commercial district of Pacific Palisades.
00:28:58.940
And almost every commercial structure here burnt down.
00:29:03.900
The building that you were pointing to earlier is the business block.
00:29:07.320
It's the oldest building in town, built in 1924.
00:29:10.780
Behind it, there are other streets that have little mom-and-pop shops, popular restaurants, all completely destroyed.
00:29:18.840
And yet, across Sunset Boulevard, there is this mall called the Palisades Village Mall, and it is almost entirely intact.
00:29:27.740
In fact, if you walk through that mall, they've now put security booms in front of it to discourage potential looters.
00:29:32.760
But if you walk through that mall, you would find it absolutely pristine, the shop's still full of goods in the windows, ready to open for business.
00:29:41.280
I can see there's a Lululemon, there's Saint Laurent, there's restaurants.
00:29:47.000
The owner of the mall is billionaire property developer Rick Caruso, and we were talking about him earlier.
00:29:52.280
He ran for mayor in 2022, and he lost to incumbent, now incumbent, Democrat Karen Bass.
00:29:59.240
She was a member of Congress before she ran for mayor.
00:30:01.240
He lost to Karen Bass, but what Karen Bass was supposed to protect burnt down, and what Rick Caruso protected is still there.
00:30:08.360
And he protected it using private firefighters, including several large mobile tankers with water in them.
00:30:20.200
You've seen tanker trucks on the highway, usually filled with gasoline.
00:30:26.300
And they had professional firefighting crews who were working all night on Tuesday, January 7th into Wednesday, January 8th to make sure that nothing burned at the mall.
00:30:36.340
So that was when things were in the very early stage, if I understand the dates right.
00:30:51.560
They said, where you and I are standing right now felt like an oven.
00:30:55.700
The moment they got out of their cars, they got right back in the cars.
00:31:00.320
And yet, Rick Caruso had private firefighters who were willing to endure those conditions with their equipment and so forth to keep the blaze away from his mall.
00:31:10.400
He also built it with newer fire-resistant materials.
00:31:14.220
But essentially, Rick Caruso protected what he had because he had enough manpower and enough water.
00:31:21.680
And both of those things are because he had enough foresight and a sense of responsibility.
00:31:30.120
The rich guy got to protect his property because he had more money and he could hire more firefighters.
00:31:34.080
Well, nothing's richer than the state of California.
00:31:36.800
And the other side of the argument is if he had the ability to protect his property with enough water and enough firefighters, then the rest of L.A. could have done the same.
00:31:49.840
People who say it's just too big a natural disaster, the wind was too strong, the fire was too intense, it didn't stop them from saving the village mall.
00:31:56.600
So the answer really is that the public services failed and the leadership failed.
00:32:06.100
We see here the stark difference between private services and public services.
00:32:12.040
Now, there's no excuse for public services to be this bad.
00:32:16.400
But they're bad with poor leadership that prioritizes the wrong things and spends money where it shouldn't.
00:32:25.080
I think the whole world loves California, or at least the idea of California.
00:32:29.760
But when it comes to crime, California is out of control, but the wealthy have private security.
00:32:34.900
When it comes to education, California is out of control, but the wealthy have private schools.
00:32:39.980
In so many ways, California is a failed state where ordinary people live.
00:32:47.280
I mean, I'm not going to compare it to a third world country, but it's a disaster.
00:32:50.260
And there are pockets of wealthy people who can survive despite the government, not thanks to it.
00:33:03.500
I'm literally talking to the president right now to specifically answer the question of what we can do for you and your daughter.
00:33:14.080
I travel a lot, and I've spent a lot of time in South Africa, and I have friends who are content to live in South Africa, despite the collapse of public services, the lack of electricity, and so forth, because they have their own services, their own security, their own boreholes, their own generators.
00:33:29.840
That is what life in California is becoming, that the wealthy who still pay taxes and have money left over can create their own private services.
00:33:41.680
Do you think this is a wake-up call for L.A., or will they keep voting for Mayor Bass?
00:33:47.760
Mayor Bass, I think, will be voted out if she doesn't resign.
00:33:50.400
I don't know statewide if we're going to see that effect.
00:33:54.620
What I do think Californians are going to try to generate, if they had the ability to invent a political candidate, it would be a Democrat who agrees with them on social issues, but who knows how to run things.
00:34:10.740
We recently elected a new district attorney, public prosecutor, to replace the old George Soros-backed DA who let the criminals run free.
00:34:17.920
That gentleman, Nathan Hockman, is doing a very good job arresting and prosecuting looters.
00:34:23.600
He also used to be a Republican, switched to Democrat.
00:34:26.220
So what's going to happen is Californians are going to try to work this out within the Democratic Party, but they're going to reject the woke Democrats like Karen Bass, who are in Ghana instead of Los Angeles when a disaster happens.
00:34:38.160
And this area in particular did not vote for Karen Bass.
00:34:44.420
I think if people understood the full potential.
00:34:48.760
I mean, there are people who understand fire safety.
00:34:51.820
I have stopped kids on the hiking trails from smoking pot on the trail.
00:34:54.940
And I've literally said to kids, if you smoke that at home, I don't have a problem with it.
00:34:58.600
If you smoke it here, this whole town is going to go up.
00:35:00.900
I have literally said that to people well before the fire.
00:35:03.360
So they need to start listening to people who understand how to run things and what the risks are.
00:35:08.120
And final point on this, in California, we like to dream.
00:35:16.600
Government is there for you when everything is going wrong.
00:35:20.200
We have to start thinking about worst-case scenarios and plan for those.
00:35:23.160
Instead of raising all this money to pay for health care for everyone and fixing the entire world's climate by cap-and-trade systems and making gas cars obsolete.
00:35:34.760
And the irony is they're all forcing us to make purchases of electric vehicles now.
00:35:39.260
You know, the gas-powered cars are going to be unlawful after 2035.
00:35:42.540
What's the biggest source of hazardous waste in this fire?
00:35:45.860
Because when the batteries burn, they create all kinds of hazardous gases and other things.
00:35:49.800
So we have to stop living for utopia and start living for people.
00:35:55.420
And I'm glad your house was spared, although there was some fire damage.
00:35:58.540
Thank goodness that you were there with the bucket and the vase putting it out.
00:36:01.860
And I hope this part of the world returns to prosperity and safety soon.
00:36:11.580
Joel Pollack, senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com, who lived in the heart of the fire.
00:36:15.960
Well, that's our show recorded on the weekend in L.A. with our friend Joel Pollack, the senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com.
00:36:28.700
It's heartbreaking that so many others were not.
00:36:30.800
By the way, he can't live there because the water is not potable.
00:36:37.580
And that's one of the political questions is how fast will they be able to rebuild and get back to life?
00:36:45.040
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters in Canada, to you at home, good night, and keep fighting for freedom.
00:36:58.820
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