The Ben Shapiro Show - Why Is California ON FIRE?!

00:00:00.000 Well, folks, wildfires are breaking out all around the Los Angeles area.

00:00:03.000 It's all horrifying.

00:00:04.000 We're bringing you all the news updates and a breakdown of exactly what happened in California that led to the magnitude of this particular wildfire, why this is a lot of mismanagement in California.

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00:00:33.000 All righty, so according to the Wall Street Journal, portions of the heavily populated Hollywood neighborhood in Los Angeles were ordered to evacuate Wednesday evening as a new fire broke out in the hills above the center of the city, which is currently battling numerous deadly blazes.

00:00:46.000 If you look at a map of the LA area, effectively, these wildfires now surround nearly the entirety of Metro Los Angeles.

00:00:53.000 They range from the Pacific Palisades, which is on the coast in California, all the way inland.

00:00:59.000 At least five people have died.

00:01:01.000 Tens of thousands were forced to evacuate as six wildfires simultaneously hit the most populated county in America.

00:01:07.000 At least 2,000 structures have been damaged or destroyed.

00:01:10.000 125,000 people have lost power.

00:01:12.000 The region's firefighting resources have been stretched to their limits.

00:01:15.000 And the authorities appear to have no containment in hand.

00:01:19.000 At this point, the winds are simply too high.

00:01:22.000 According to the Wall Street Journal, those devastating fires have been driven.

00:01:26.000 By high-intensity winds, the Santa Ana winds, that blow from the deserts of interior California and Nevada out to the Pacific.

00:01:33.000 Those Santa Ana winds are feared by Californians because they are fast-moving, dry, and extremely warm, which means they can push embers from one fire into an entirely different area.

00:01:41.000 They can also blow for days.

00:01:43.000 The gusts were reaching 100 miles an hour in the San Gabriel Mountains at 8 a.m.

00:01:47.000 as of Wednesday morning, according to the National Weather Service.

00:01:50.000 And the fallout is absolutely horrifying.

00:01:53.000 The video...

00:01:54.000 is tremendously shocking.

00:01:55.000 Here are some of the footage of burning in Pacific Palisades.

00:01:58.000 Again, Pacific Palisades is a really, really upscale area in California.

00:02:02.000 The homes that are being burned are some of the nicest homes in the entire state, which means in the entire country.

00:02:07.000 Here are some of the footage.

00:02:08.000 This is from NBC News Channel 4. Where we're looking here directly to the south, right next to the Aldi, is Elliott Arts Magnet Middle School, which also caught fire earlier this morning.

00:02:23.000 And now we're seeing it across the street at the grocery store.

00:02:26.000 We're seeing some folks here that are making their way up on Lake Avenue right here.

00:02:30.000 here but this is a busy thoroughfare as you can see people are sort of walking around and filming this is because there are not the resources available to actually put out these fires even in heavily populated areas there's footage that came out a little bit earlier this morning aerial footage of pacific palisades and the entire place looks to have basically been burned to the ground over on msnbc reporter steve gutenberg's camera feed cut in the middle of his coverage of what was going on in pacific palisades that's how bad the situation was

00:02:57.000 we should use this current and his compassion We've totally lost it.

00:03:10.000 It's the actor Steve Guttenberg who is calling into MSNBC. James Woods has lost his home in the area.

00:03:17.000 Again, this is a very wealthy enclave of California.

00:03:20.000 It's not just hitting that very wealthy enclave.

00:03:21.000 It's also hitting places in Pasadena.

00:03:24.000 It's moving all the way on up to Calabasas.

00:03:26.000 And the entire area is basically on fire.

00:03:29.000 Here is some footage that Elon Musk put up on X. Sent to him by a friend driving through Pacific Palisades.

00:03:39.000 And as you can see, entire areas burned.

00:03:41.000 Houses burned to the ground.

00:03:43.000 Nothing left.

00:03:43.000 Chimneys standing.

00:03:45.000 Dramatic fallout in these areas.

00:03:48.000 And the wildfire map is dramatic this morning.

00:03:51.000 Let me take a look at the wildfire map.

00:03:53.000 It is just unbelievable how much area has been burned.

00:03:58.000 An area stretching all the way from Glendale in the west.

00:04:02.000 All the way out toward Covina in the east.

00:04:05.000 Large swaths of Santa Clarita.

00:04:08.000 The area that stretches all the way near Agora Hills, all the way down to Santa Monica.

00:04:13.000 And a sunset fire has broken out as well that is now threatening.

00:04:18.000 There's an evacuation warning in parts of West Hollywood.

00:04:20.000 I mean, these are heavily populated areas.

00:04:22.000 Truly, largely populated areas.

00:04:25.000 Incredibly dangerous fires.

00:04:27.000 And all of this, of course, raises the question as to...

00:04:29.000 How did any of this happen?

00:04:31.000 According to the L.A. County Fire Chief, they have no idea how all this happened.

00:04:33.000 It's possible it's the wind.

00:04:34.000 It's also possible that it's copycats.

00:04:36.000 It's possible that this happened a bunch of times in California recently.

00:04:41.000 You have homeless people who are living in these areas and they are using open flame.

00:04:44.000 It's possible that somebody threw a cigarette out of the window.

00:04:46.000 We really have no idea at this point.

00:04:48.000 Here's the L.A. County Fire Chief, Anthony Marone, saying the cause of the wildfires at this point is unknown.

00:04:55.000 We have over 500 personnel assigned.

00:04:59.000 And unfortunately, we have two reported fatalities to civilians.

00:05:04.000 Unknown cause at this time, and we do have a number of significant injuries.

00:05:11.000 We have over 100 structures destroyed, and the cause of the fire is unknown and under investigation.

00:05:22.000 The L.A. County Board of Supervisors member, Catherine Barger.

00:05:26.000 Says, don't worry about it.

00:05:27.000 The L.A. mayor, Karen Bass, is engaged.

00:05:30.000 She's on top of this.

00:05:31.000 Now, there was only one problem.

00:05:32.000 Karen Bass was, until last night, in Ghana.

00:05:35.000 What the hell she was doing in Ghana, nobody knows. 0.99

00:05:37.000 Remember, Karen Bass was actively considered as a vice presidential candidate for Joe Biden in 2020. And this is how thin the Democratic bench is.

00:05:46.000 Here is an L.A. County Board of Superpowers member defending Karen Bass's performance.

00:05:50.000 Remember, Ted Cruz was really bad because even though he had actually zero authority, Do you know if Karen Bass is on her way back to Los Angeles?

00:06:19.000 She is, and I've been in contact with her.

00:06:22.000 She is...

00:06:23.000 She's very, very, very engaged in this and is going to be here today.

00:06:28.000 And so I, you know, she is, with technology the way it is, she has been in contact up in the air and is going to be landing this morning and is going to hit the ground running.

00:06:39.000 So the fact that the mayor is not in town doesn't mean that we're not getting the resources we need.

00:06:46.000 And the president of the city council, who's going to be here at the press briefing, Marquis, is fully engaged as well.

00:06:54.000 Well, not so much, Ken.

00:06:58.000 Karen Bass was getting on a plane from London back to Los Angeles because, of course, she was in Ghana. 1.00

00:07:04.000 And a reporter caught up with her right before she boarded the plane and asked her some very basic questions.

00:07:09.000 She had zero responses.

00:07:11.000 Do you owe citizens an apology for being absent while their homes were burning?

00:07:16.000 Do you regret cutting the fire department budget by millions of dollars, Madam Mayor?

00:07:22.000 Have you nothing to say today?

00:07:26.000 Have you absolutely nothing to say to the citizens today? 0.90

00:07:31.000 Elon Musk says that you're utterly incompetent.

00:07:33.000 Are you considering your position?

00:07:38.000 Madam Mayor, have you absolutely nothing to say to the citizens today who are dealing with this disaster?

00:07:44.000 Do you think you should have been visiting Ghana while this was unfolding back home?

00:07:49.000 Madam Mayor, let me ask you just again.

00:07:50.000 Have you anything to say to the citizens today as you return?

00:07:55.000 Madam Mayor, just a few words for the citizens today as you return to deal with the catastrophe.

00:08:04.000 Man, deer in the headlights.

00:08:05.000 Deer in the headlights, Cameron.

00:08:06.000 I mean, the real question is why it is that all these local officials always feel the necessity.

00:08:10.000 To jet set off to distant parts of the globe as part of their mayoral job.

00:08:15.000 It's very confusing to me what exactly the LA mayor has to do with Ghana, per se.

00:08:20.000 It's a very weird move in general.

00:08:22.000 But it's not just being absent.

00:08:24.000 It's that she's done a horrible job leading the city while she's been the mayor of the city. 0.99

00:08:29.000 I mean, here she was.

00:08:30.000 She's back as of Thursday morning.

00:08:33.000 And here she was trying to tell people where to go to receive new information, and she can't even read a website name. 0.65

00:08:40.000 That's how incompetent these folks are. 0.99

00:08:42.000 Right now, if you need help, emergency information, resources, and shelter is available.

00:08:48.000 All of this can be found at URL. At URL, guys.

00:08:55.000 At URL. Yeah, for those of you who are computer literate at all.

00:09:00.000 A URL is actually just the web destination, like the generic web destination for any web destination.

00:09:06.000 That's like saying, for more information, head to internet.

00:09:09.000 Head to www.

00:09:12.000 My goodness.

00:09:13.000 Well, folks, some people in government are terrible.

00:09:16.000 It turns out that a lot of government itself is quite terrible.

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00:11:25.000 Patrick Soon-Shiong, who's the billionaire owner of the LA Times, slammed Bass in an ex-post, claiming the mayor slashed the LA Fire Department budget.

00:11:32.000 Quote, fires in LA are sadly no surprise.

00:11:35.000 Yet the mayor cut LA Fire Department's budget by $23 million, he wrote in a tweet.

00:11:38.000 Reports of empty fire hydrants raise serious questions.

00:11:40.000 Competence matters.

00:11:42.000 She was also taken on by Rick Caruso. 0.98

00:11:45.000 Rick Caruso, of course, was basically a Republican running as a Democrat in the last LA mayoral race.

00:11:51.000 And it was the endorsement of a bunch of Hollywood celebrities that put Karen Bass over the top against Rick Caruso commented on Karen Bass's poor leadership. 1.00

00:12:01.000 We've got a mayor that's out of the country.

00:12:03.000 And we've got a city that's burning.

00:12:05.000 And there's no resources to put out fires.

00:12:08.000 So if you look at your pictures, you don't see the firefighters there because there's nothing they can do.

00:12:14.000 And it looks like we're in a third world country here.

00:12:18.000 And we've got a lot of tough questions that we need to ask the mayor.

00:12:23.000 And the city council and our representatives and the county representatives, why didn't you work to mitigate this?

00:12:30.000 And that is the big question.

00:12:33.000 See, when it comes to natural disasters, natural disasters can happen anywhere at any time.

00:12:38.000 There are earthquakes and wildfires and hurricanes.

00:12:41.000 But the thing about wildfires in particular is that public policy matters an awful lot.

00:12:45.000 See, with every natural disaster situation, public policy can mitigate the effects of the natural disaster.

00:12:51.000 This is why if you have an earthquake in a first world country like the United States, not a lot of buildings are going to fall down.

00:12:56.000 But if you have an earthquake in a third world country, tens of thousands of people might die.

00:13:00.000 Same magnitude, it's just the buildings are built to code in places like the United States.

00:13:05.000 When it comes to hurricane response, how you respond matters.

00:13:08.000 This is why Florida, under Governor Ron DeSantis, handled disasters really, really well.

00:13:12.000 When it comes to mitigation and response, when it comes to preparedness, California has been an absolute disaster area that is true for years.

00:13:20.000 They've not done anything that they could have done to mitigate the effects of seasons like this.

00:13:25.000 Gavin Newsom, the absolutely execrable governor of California who has spent more money than any governor in the history of the state of California by a long shot who spends billions of dollars on useless rail. 0.87

00:13:35.000 By the way, I used to be a host in Los Angeles and I actually had the opportunity to interview Gavin Newsom and I asked him about his dumb high-speed rail. 0.98

00:13:42.000 At the time, he was running for governor and he said it's a dumb idea. 0.73

00:13:45.000 Then, of course, he immediately reversed himself to spend billions of dollars on a rail that goes nowhere and has never been built.

00:13:51.000 But Gavin Newsom was out there trying to pretend that he was handling the situation even as half the state is apparently on fire.

00:14:00.000 Here at the Palisades Fire, you can see behind me how quickly this is growing.

00:14:04.000 Hundreds and hundreds of personnel all throughout the state of California are here.

00:14:08.000 Coming from Northern California, we pre-positioned 110 engines.

00:14:12.000 We've got fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, dozers, water tenders, specialty personnel, putting everything we can to not only suppress this fire, but to prevent additional fires over the course of the next few days.

00:14:24.000 Unprecedented winds for this time of year, and of course, this time of year, traditionally, Now, again, one of the beautiful things about being a Democrat is you blame everybody but yourself, even though you're the person with authority.

00:14:51.000 So Gavin Newsom was, in fact, talking yesterday about...

00:14:55.000 Whether he had any responsibility for anything that's going on, and it turns out everyone else who's not Gavin Newsom is to blame.

00:15:00.000 What a shock.

00:15:02.000 What is the situation with the water?

00:15:04.000 Obviously, in the Palisades, it ran out last night in the hydrants.

00:15:06.000 I was trying to fire fire on this block.

00:15:08.000 They left because there was no water in the hydrant here.

00:15:10.000 The local folks are trying to figure that out.

00:15:13.000 I mean, just when you have a system that's not dissimilar to what we've seen in other extraordinarily large-scale fires, whether it be pipe, electricity, or whether it just be the complete overwhelm of the system.

00:15:24.000 I mean, those hydrants are typical for two or three fires, maybe one fire.

00:15:27.000 You have something at this scale.

00:15:29.000 But again, that's going to be determined by the local.

00:15:31.000 Ah, the local authorities.

00:15:34.000 The local authorities.

00:15:35.000 See, here's the thing.

00:15:36.000 Statewide policy actually matters a good deal.

00:15:38.000 And you know who's been talking about this pretty openly and repeatedly for years and years at this point would be one Donald J. Trump, the president-elect of the United States.

00:15:47.000 In fact, it was just last year on Joe Rogan.

00:15:50.000 That he was talking about how California was not doing enough to stop wildfires.

00:15:54.000 They said, we have no water.

00:15:56.000 I said, do you have a drought?

00:15:58.000 No, we don't have a drought.

00:15:59.000 I said, why do you have no water?

00:16:00.000 Because the water isn't allowed to flow down.

00:16:03.000 It's got a natural flow from Canada all the way up north.

00:16:06.000 More water than they could ever use.

00:16:09.000 And in order to protect a tiny little fish, the water up north gets routed into the Pacific Ocean.

00:16:17.000 Millions and millions of gallons of water gets poured.

00:16:20.000 I could have water for all of that land, water for your forests.

00:16:25.000 You know, your forests are dry as a bone.

00:16:27.000 Yeah.

00:16:27.000 Okay?

00:16:27.000 Dangerous.

00:16:28.000 That water could be routed.

00:16:29.000 You know, you could have everything.

00:16:31.000 Not only dangerous, billions of dollars a year they spend on forest fires.

00:16:36.000 And, you know, there's a case with the environment.

00:16:38.000 They're not allowed to rake their forests because you're not allowed to touch it.

00:16:43.000 And all they have to do is clean their forest, meaning rake it up, get rid of the leaves, get rid of, you know, leaves that are sitting there for five years.

00:16:51.000 Well, certainly get rid of the dead fall.

00:16:53.000 And get rid of the trees that have fallen.

00:16:57.000 Yes!

00:16:58.000 Perfectly obvious.

00:16:59.000 By the way, he's right about all of this.

00:17:00.000 California's had a significant water shortage for years because they refused to build the infrastructure necessary, the reservoirs and the dams necessary to actually, you know, hold the water from the seasons where it is raining in California.

00:17:12.000 Or to bring water from up north.

00:17:15.000 They've been flushing fresh water out to the ocean for years to save something called the Delta smelt because of environmentalists.

00:17:23.000 Here was Trump back in 2019 talking about Newsom when it comes to natural disasters.

00:17:27.000 He said, quote, The governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has done a terrible job of forest management.

00:17:31.000 I told him from the first day we met, he must clean his forest floors regardless of what his bosses the environmentalists demand of him.

00:17:36.000 He must also do burns and cut fire stoppers.

00:17:38.000 Every year, as the fires rage in California burns, it's the same thing.

00:17:41.000 And then he comes to the federal government for money help.

00:17:43.000 No more.

00:17:44.000 Get your act together, Governor.

00:17:45.000 You don't see close to the level of burn in other states, but our teams are working well together in putting these massive and many fires out.

00:17:50.000 Great firefighters also open up the ridiculously closed water lanes coming down from the north.

00:17:54.000 Don't pour it out into the Pacific Ocean.

00:17:56.000 Should be done immediately.

00:17:57.000 California desperately needs water, and you can have it now.

00:17:59.000 That was Trump writing on Twitter back in 2019. He was right about all of this.

00:18:03.000 So let's go through all of this mismanagement because there's a ton of mismanagement ranging.

00:18:08.000 It is a perfect storm, not just in terms of the fire conditions, but in terms of the political conditions for fires to rage out of control.

00:18:16.000 From DEI to budgeting, from environmentalism to blaming climate change, Democrats have done a horrifying job on all of this.

00:18:26.000 Again, you can't blame Gavin Newsom or Karen Bass for the fires.

00:18:29.000 You can blame them for not doing the preparation necessary to deal with some of the most perfectly predictable weather that California has.

00:18:36.000 You see wildfires pretty much every year in California.

00:18:39.000 I mean, last year we were there in 2020, there was a very large wildfire in many of these same areas.

00:18:44.000 So let's begin with DEI and firefighting.

00:18:48.000 So California, LA in particular, has spent an awful lot of time attempting to do its firefighting staffing with intersectional characteristics in mind.

00:18:58.000 Now, this is not a rip on the current firefighters in Los Angeles. 0.98

00:19:02.000 It is a suggestion that the misprioritization Of effective firefighting below the race and sexual identity of the people who are doing the firefighting is stupid and wrong and backwards. 0.97

00:19:17.000 And that if I were to Google LA Fire Department, what I should have seen over the course of the last several years is LA Fire Department staffing up with best possible not, not enough lesbian black women in LA Fire Department. 1.00

00:19:29.000 Unfortunately, it's the latter that you see.

00:19:31.000 So all the way back in 2017, I actually testified in front of Congress.

00:19:36.000 About DEI, intersectionality, and all this sort of stuff with Adam Carolla.

00:19:40.000 Adam Carolla, of course, is a very prominent host, podcast host, radio host in Los Angeles.

00:19:45.000 He lives in one of these areas.

00:19:47.000 And Adam, in 2017, talked about how he had attempted at one point to join the LA Fire Department and was told he couldn't because he was, you know, just a big white guy.

00:19:56.000 I want to talk about my white privilege so badly.

00:20:01.000 I graduated North Hollywood High with a 1.7 GPA. I could not find a job.

00:20:06.000 I walked to a fire station in North Hollywood.

00:20:09.000 I was 19. I was living in the garage of my family home.

00:20:12.000 My mom was on welfare and food stamps.

00:20:14.000 And I said, can I get a job as a fireman? 0.64

00:20:17.000 And they said, no, because you're not black, Hispanic, or a woman. 0.93

00:20:21.000 We'll see you in about seven years. 0.98

00:20:24.000 And I went to a construction site and dug ditches and picked up garbage for the next seven years.

00:20:29.000 years, I got a letter in the mail sent to my father's house saying, your time has come to do the written exam for the LA Fire Department.

00:20:38.000 I took it and I was standing in line and I had a young woman of color standing behind me in line. 0.82

00:20:43.000 And I said, just out of curiosity, when did you sign up to become a fireman?

00:20:47.000 Because I did it or a person seven years ago.

00:20:50.000 And she said, Wednesday.

00:20:53.000 That is an example of my white privilege.

00:20:55.000 Okay.

00:20:56.000 And again.

00:20:58.000 This has been a long-standing policy of the LA Fire Department going back for decades.

00:21:03.000 Well, some things never change.

00:21:05.000 Obviously, DEI has been a problem going all the way back to 2017 when Adam was testifying.

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00:23:20.000 In 2021, Robin Abkarian, one of the worst columnists in America, columnist for the Los Angeles Times, Had a piece titled, quote, the LA Fire Department's sexism problem.

00:23:29.000 Yeah, that was the main problem there.

00:23:31.000 That was clearly the main problem.

00:23:33.000 When I reached Chris Larson on Thursday's shoes in Spokane, Washington, attending an international conference for female firefighters, Larson, 55, is president of LA Women in the Fire Service and has worked as an LA firefighter for 31 years.

00:23:44.000 Over time, she's risen to the rank of battalion chief and is currently the only black female officer in the department.

00:23:50.000 She is, as are many of her firefighter sisters, deeply unhappy about the dearth of women on the force and about the fact that women are hazed, harassed, or disrespected by some of their male colleagues.

00:24:00.000 This is an especially fraught moment for the LA Fire Department.

00:24:03.000 This is in 2021. Talking about how terrible it was that there weren't enough LGBTQ people in the LA Fire Department.

00:24:10.000 There weren't enough women. 1.00

00:24:12.000 That was really the big issue.

00:24:13.000 In 2022, at the behest of the left, then Mayor Eric Garcetti stood alongside current Fire Chief Kristen Crowley and launched the L.A. Fire Department's first ever Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Bureau, focused on ensuring a safe, diverse and inclusive workplace for all.

00:24:29.000 Garcetti said, we believe in and are committed to justice in Los Angeles and we focus an equity lens on every aspect of our work.

00:24:36.000 Of course, Kristen Crowley is herself a lesbian, which means that she is highly qualified to be L.A. Fire Department Chief. 0.72

00:24:43.000 And that's obviously the main qualification they were looking for.

00:24:46.000 Here she was defending.

00:24:47.000 The DEI initiative at the time.

00:24:50.000 I am super inspired.

00:24:53.000 She took time out of her already busy schedule to tell us about her vision for the department's future, one that includes a three-year strategic plan to increase diversity.

00:25:02.000 People ask me, well, what number are you looking for?

00:25:04.000 I'm not looking for a number.

00:25:05.000 It's never enough.

00:25:07.000 Out of 3,300 city firefighters, only 115 are women right now.

00:25:12.000 She's already looking at ways to change that. 1.00

00:25:14.000 She's quick to point out that doing so has a greater purpose, attracting the best and brightest for the job.

00:25:20.000 They feel included, they feel valued, and they feel part of a cohesive team.

00:25:28.000 Really slow clap for the geniuses who decided that we needed racial diversity and sexual diversity in firefighting as the top priority over at the LA Fire Department.

00:25:37.000 NPR in 2023 covered this diversity initiative.

00:25:41.000 The byline over there suggests, quote, firefighting is mostly white and male.

00:25:44.000 A California program aims to change that.

00:25:47.000 Well, man, oh man, have you guys succeeded.

00:25:49.000 You guys are amazing.

00:25:51.000 Now, again, it's not the racial constituency of the fire department that is responsible for the failures of the fire department.

00:25:57.000 However, where you put your focus as a government says something about your priorities.

00:26:02.000 And your priority obviously wasn't just staffing up with the best.

00:26:05.000 Here's NPR reporting on this in 2023. Firefighting departments nationwide have tried to diversify their ranks for years.

00:26:14.000 They have made only modest progress.

00:26:17.000 Today, the profession remains overwhelmingly white and male.

00:26:22.000 Oh, no.

00:26:23.000 Oh, absolutely.

00:26:24.000 Wow.

00:26:25.000 That's so terrible.

00:26:26.000 Well, the good news is that at least Kristen Crowley was honored at the local pride parade. 0.97

00:26:30.000 That's the really important thing.

00:26:31.000 thing.

00:26:31.000 This is just from last year.

00:26:33.000 Now, Half West Hollywood may be on fire by This evening.

00:26:45.000 But the important thing is that the fire department chief is herself not straight.

00:26:49.000 That is the thing that matters most of all.

00:26:52.000 But again, when it comes to the DEI and the fire department, that is a problem.

00:26:56.000 It is also a tertiary or quaternary problem when it comes to the list of problems here.

00:27:01.000 Top of the list would be things like lying about your wildfire prevention efforts, which is what Gavin Newsom did back in 2021. According to CAP Radio, quote, on Gavin Newsom's first full day in office, January 8th, 2019, the newly elected governor stood before the cameras clad in jeans and sneakers and surrounded by emergency responders and declared war on wildfires.

00:27:21.000 Everybody has had enough, the governor said.

00:27:22.000 He said climate change was sparking more fires more frequently.

00:27:26.000 And he said that the state's response had to fundamentally change.

00:27:29.000 But two and a half years later, as California approaches what could be the worst wildfire season on record, it does so with little evidence of the year-round attention Newsom promised.

00:27:37.000 An investigation from Cap Radio and NPR's California newsroom found the governor has misrepresented his accomplishments and even disinvested in wildfire prevention.

00:27:45.000 This is 2021. The investigation found Newsom overstated by an astounding 690 percent the number of acres treated with fuel breaks and prescribed burns in the very forestry projects he said needed to be prioritized to protect the state's most vulnerable communities.

00:27:59.000 Newsom has claimed that 35 priority projects carried out as a result of his executive order resulted in fire prevention work on 90,000 acres, but the state's own data show the actual number is 11,399 acres.

00:28:12.000 Overall, California's response, this is NPR reporting, has faltered under Newsom.

00:28:16.000 After an initial jump during his first year in office, data obtained by Cap Radio and NPR's California newsroom show Cal Fire's fuel reduction output dropped by half in 2020 to levels below Governor Jerry Brown's final year.

00:28:27.000 At the same time, Newsom slashed roughly $150 million from Cal Fire's wildfire prevention budget.

00:28:34.000 It's circa 2021. Gavin Newsom, the most amazing governor who wanted to run for president.

00:28:41.000 Unbelievable.

00:28:42.000 And it's not just on the statewide level.

00:28:45.000 Just weeks ago, LA Mayor Karen Bass cut the fire department budget by nearly $20 million.

00:28:52.000 According to the New York Post, LA Mayor Karen Bass faced scorching criticism Wednesday.

00:28:57.000 As it was revealed, she cut the city's fire department budget by $17.6 million ahead of this week's devastating fires, as she prioritized funds for its massive homeless population that largely went unspent, according to a report.

00:29:08.000 The cut was the second largest in Bass's 2024-25 fiscal budget city figure show, and it wasn't even the gunning she wanted.

00:29:15.000 She actually wanted to cut $23 million from the fire department budget.

00:29:19.000 In fact, the cuts were so bad that even Crowley...

00:29:23.000 Was warning how bad they would be.

00:29:25.000 She actually wrote a letter to the Board of Fire Commissioners saying, quote, Wildfires.

00:29:54.000 That was according to, again, LA Fire Chief Kristen Crowley to Mayor Karen Bass last month.

00:30:01.000 Last month.

00:30:02.000 And here's the thing.

00:30:02.000 Preparation for this stuff requires years in advance.

00:30:06.000 Years in advance.

00:30:07.000 Chad Pergram, Senior Congressional Correspondent for Fox News, interviewed Senator Tim Sheehy of Montana, who made his career, made his business career, with a company that fought wildfires.

00:30:20.000 And what Sheehy said is, quote, those of us in the wildfire community have been shouting from the rooftops for years this was going to happen.

00:30:25.000 We're going to have the big one in a wildland-urban interface environment, which is what this is.

00:30:29.000 It was going to be catastrophic.

00:30:30.000 This is the big one.

00:30:31.000 As a federal apparatus, we are not prepared to fight fire year-round.

00:30:34.000 It's January.

00:30:35.000 Most of the air tankers, helicopters, and firefighters are off contract.

00:30:37.000 They are not prepared to launch out. 0.81

00:30:42.000 This is like one of the few things the government should actually be good at, and they have sucked at it. 0.62

00:30:47.000 They've been awful at it.

00:30:49.000 They haven't also done the things they need to do on an environmental level.

00:30:52.000 So they did not clear the brush.

00:30:53.000 They did not create the fuel breaks.

00:30:55.000 They did not do backfires in order to burn and clear burn some of the areas that were most likely to become tinder for a giant wildfire like this.

00:31:05.000 In fact, the firefighters were running out of hydrant water in the middle of this.

00:31:12.000 They were running out.

00:31:13.000 That's insane.

00:31:14.000 They literally had no water.

00:31:16.000 According to the LA Times, the hydrants are down, one firefighter said over the radio.

00:31:20.000 Water supply just dropped, another added.

00:31:22.000 The Department of Water and Power confirmed reports of hydrants being empty without giving numbers.

00:31:28.000 According to Rick Caruso, the problem stems from reservoirs that feed the neighborhood's hydrants.

00:31:32.000 He said this is a window into a systemic problem of the city, not only of mismanagement, but our infrastructure is old.

00:31:36.000 By the way, the infrastructure in LA is super old.

00:31:39.000 We used to live in Los Angeles, as you all know.

00:31:41.000 When we were living in Los Angeles, the transformers that provided power to everybody's houses.

00:31:46.000 Those things hadn't been updated since the 1920s.

00:31:49.000 L.A., California are wildly mismanaged.

00:31:52.000 They've built no new reservoirs.

00:31:54.000 They've built no new dams.

00:31:57.000 The Sites Reservoir, which was a very important reservoir for holding water for situations like this, which was planned in a remote corner of the western Sacramento Valley for at least 40 years, still has not been built.

00:32:11.000 It still has not been built.

00:32:14.000 They spent billions of dollars building nothing.

00:32:18.000 That is how California works.

00:32:20.000 Also, worth noting, California did in fact release reservoir water not all that long ago.

00:32:26.000 According to Newsweek, in February 2024, CBS 8 reported that billions of gallons of water had been released from local reservoirs over the prior year out of an effort to keep water levels low should dams fail and inundate surrounding areas.

00:32:39.000 You know, it would have helped that if you had built more dams and more reservoirs, but you didn't have it.

00:32:43.000 So, in short, They release water because they didn't do the infrastructure work.

00:32:49.000 And then the water is not there when you need it.

00:32:52.000 Again, slow clap for the geniuses in California.

00:32:55.000 And of course, so much of this is also tied to the insane environmental policies.

00:32:58.000 You can't build anything in California from houses to reservoirs without going through years of legal wrangling.

00:33:04.000 You can't do controlled burns because you're afraid you'll be sued.

00:33:08.000 As Isaiah Taylor, the founder of Valatomics, makes clear, he says, In 2007, the Sierra Club successfully sued the Forest Service to prevent them from creating a categorical exclusion to NEPA for controlled burns.

00:33:22.000 The CE would have allowed the Forest Service to conduct burns without having to perform a full environmental impact survey.

00:33:28.000 The median time for that is three and a half years.

00:33:31.000 The John Muir Project helped claw back the full scope of the categorical exclusions from the 2018 omnibus bill as well.

00:33:38.000 In 2021, the outgoing Trump...

00:33:40.000 Bureau of Land Management was served with a notice of intent to sue by the Center for Biological Diversity for their fuel reduction plan in the Great Basin.

00:33:48.000 The Bureau of Land Management then backed off because they were afraid of the legal consequences.

00:33:52.000 The environmentalist groups have sued everybody into the ground to stop them from doing precisely the things they need to do in order to prevent wildfires like this.

00:33:59.000 Again, here's the point.

00:34:01.000 Disaster can strike anywhere.

00:34:02.000 The preparation here?

00:34:03.000 Non-existent.

00:34:05.000 In fact, worse than non-existent.

00:34:06.000 Damaging.

00:34:07.000 Actively damaging.

00:34:10.000 And yet, Democrats keep being elected.

00:34:12.000 Folks, public policy has a lot to do with this.

00:34:15.000 And when you hear Democrats shout from the rooftops that it's climate change, understand that it is a misdirect.

00:34:19.000 It is a misdirect.

00:34:20.000 Even were that true, it would not alleviate their responsibility to mitigate the effects.

00:34:27.000 That is literally what they are elected to do.

00:34:31.000 When you have David Jolly reporting over at MSNBC, and when he says, we didn't do enough to address climate change.

00:34:39.000 Nothing would have addressed climate change in time to stop these wildfires.

00:34:44.000 When you say climate change, what you really mean is don't blame the politicians who are really to blame.

00:34:50.000 We don't do enough to prevent the change of climate science or change of climate or address climate science.

00:34:56.000 But we also are ignoring the fact that we have this this significant risk peril in communities across the country.

00:35:05.000 And the government either is going to help subsidize paying for that risk on the front end or is going to have to bail it out on the back end.

00:35:12.000 Bailing it out is always more expensive and less responsible.

00:35:17.000 Just amazing.

00:35:19.000 Just amazing.

00:35:20.000 It must be.

00:35:21.000 It must be that what we have to do is stop driving carbon-powered cars.

00:35:25.000 That would have stopped all of this.

00:35:28.000 Or maybe, again.

00:35:29.000 That is just a workaround to the fact that Democrats have done a horrifying job of handling their bleep when it comes to actual governance.

00:35:35.000 All right, coming up, we'll get to Joe Biden's inane response to all of this.

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00:36:10.000 Again, the mismanagement here is off the charts.

00:36:13.000 Joe Biden, of course, is still titularly president of the United States.

00:36:17.000 He did a press conference with Gavin Newsom and it didn't go well.

00:36:22.000 It didn't go well, mainly because the president is clearly senile at this point.

00:36:25.000 So he lamented the fact that Hunter Biden And his new wife may have lost their home.

00:36:31.000 It's astounding what's happening.

00:36:33.000 There's only one piece of good news.

00:36:35.000 My son lives out here and his wife.

00:36:38.000 They got a notification yesterday.

00:36:40.000 Their home was probably burning ground.

00:36:42.000 Today, it appears that it may be still standing.

00:36:45.000 They're not sure.

00:36:48.000 Okay, so then he followed that one up.

00:36:50.000 He followed that one up by saying that there is good news.

00:36:53.000 He's a great-grandfather today. 0.95

00:36:56.000 What the hell is wrong with him? 0.99

00:36:57.000 Seriously, the most egoistic, self-centered human being alive, Joe Biden. 0.99

00:37:03.000 2,000 people have lost their homes.

00:37:06.000 And Joe Biden is talking about how he's a great grandfather. - But the good news is, I'm a great grandfather, as of today.

00:37:16.000 I'm a granddaughter.

00:37:20.000 10-pound, four-ounce baby girl, a baby boy.

00:37:23.000 So I remember this tape for a lot of wrong reasons. - Well, I mean, clearly our country's in the best of hands Can't imagine why he would have lost re-election to Donald Trump and why his vice president did lose her election to Donald Trump.

00:37:39.000 Meanwhile, President Trump correctly surmised that Gavin Newsom is to blame.

00:37:44.000 President Trump spoke about this yesterday.

00:37:47.000 He put out a statement, quote, Governor Gavin Newsom refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him.

00:37:52.000 It would have allowed millions of gallons of water from excess rain and snow melt from the north to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way.

00:38:00.000 He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called the Smelt by giving it less water.

00:38:04.000 It didn't work, but didn't care about the people of California.

00:38:06.000 Now the ultimate price is being paid.

00:38:08.000 I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to flow into California. 0.99

00:38:12.000 He is to blame for this.

00:38:14.000 On top of all, no water for fire hydrants, not firefighting planes, a true disaster.

00:38:19.000 This, of course, led the media to suggest that the real problem here is, wait for it, Donald Trump.

00:38:23.000 There was one MSNBC commentator, Mike Murphy, suggesting it's imperative that Donald Trump find the right tone.

00:38:29.000 The right tone.

00:38:30.000 Well, here's the thing.

00:38:31.000 He's been telling Newsom what to do on this thing for the better part of a decade.

00:38:36.000 And Newsom did none of those things.

00:38:38.000 So if you're not going to cudgel him at some point into doing the things, then what exactly are you supposed to do?

00:38:46.000 I hope the president-elect in his new job will find the grace to know what the tone ought to be, which would be a change for him.

00:38:57.000 But I will hope for the best here because we could use it.

00:39:04.000 Yeah, that's clearly the issue.

00:39:07.000 That's clearly the issue.

00:39:08.000 Well, I have to say, big L for media coverage goes to David Muir. 0.96

00:39:13.000 Who humiliated himself in the presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, made a fool of himself, but he wasn't done making a fool of himself.

00:39:21.000 Muir, who of course works for ABC News, he was reporting the wildfire and he had to make sure, he was wearing some sort of firefighting outfit, which I don't understand, he's not a firefighter, that's weird. 0.58

00:39:30.000 But in any case, he wanted to dress up as a firefighter, he was cosplaying as a firefighter, but he needed to make sure that it was form-fitting enough, his firefighting outfit.

00:39:39.000 He didn't want to look like he was swimming in his fake firefighter outfit.

00:39:42.000 So he used clothespins in the back.

00:39:45.000 And when he turns, you can clearly see the clothespins holding his firefighter uniform closer to his body.

00:39:51.000 He needed the fitted look.

00:39:56.000 And there we go.

00:40:04.000 Oh, boy.

00:40:09.000 Oh, boy.

00:40:11.000 He is our media.

00:40:14.000 Only the best.

00:40:15.000 Only the best.

00:40:16.000 Well, speaking of Joe Biden, there is more bad news for Joe Biden.

00:40:20.000 A new poll finds that Americans think that Joe Biden is the worst president since Richard Nixon, which, by the way, is selling Richard Nixon kind of short because Richard Nixon did do some good things as opposed to Joe Biden, who has done only bad things.

00:40:31.000 The survey was conducted between December 2nd and 18th of last year and found that only 6% of respondents believe Joe Biden's presidency was outstanding.

00:40:38.000 Those are all the members of Joe Biden's immediate family.

00:40:40.000 13% said it was above average.

00:40:42.000 26% said it was average.

00:40:44.000 17% said below average.

00:40:45.000 37% believe it was poor.

00:40:48.000 That last total is the highest for any president included in the poll.

00:40:51.000 His net positive of minus 35 is better only than Nixon's minus 42. That is not good at all, but it is accurate because he has been, indeed, an absolutely horrifying president.

00:41:04.000 He's also still delusional.

00:41:06.000 Hilariously, Joe Biden.

00:41:07.000 Sat with USA Today's Susan Page for a lengthy interview, and he says he thinks he would have beaten Donald Trump.

00:41:14.000 Uh, no.

00:41:15.000 You certainly would not have.

00:41:17.000 I mean, Kamala Harris didn't, obviously, but Joe Biden definitely would not have won.

00:41:23.000 And then he was asked, would you have had the vigor to serve for another four years?

00:41:27.000 He said, quote, I don't know.

00:41:28.000 That's why I thought when I first announced talking to Barack about it, I said I thought I was the person.

00:41:31.000 I had no intention of running after Bo died.

00:41:34.000 For real, not a joke.

00:41:35.000 And then when Trump was running again for re-election, I really thought I had the best chance of beating him.

00:41:38.000 But I also wasn't looking to be president when I was 85, 86 years old.

00:41:41.000 So I did talk about passing the baton.

00:41:43.000 Who the hell knows?

00:41:44.000 So far, so good.

00:41:45.000 Well, no, actually not so far, so good, since he's obviously no longer with us.

00:41:50.000 This did force Hakeem Jeffries to make one of the funniest statements of the day.

00:41:54.000 He was asked, does he think that Joe Biden would have beaten Donald Trump?

00:41:56.000 And he's like, well, we're not going to talk about that.

00:42:00.000 I know over the summer you met and had a private conversation with President Biden in the run-up to his decision to exit the 2024 race.

00:42:09.000 In a new interview in USA Today, he says that he believes that he could have beaten President Trump based on the polling.

00:42:17.000 You saw the polling as well.

00:42:19.000 Is the president right?

00:42:20.000 We're looking forward, not backward.

00:42:23.000 But was he right?

00:42:24.000 Could he have beat the former president?

00:42:26.000 Same answer.

00:42:27.000 President-elect.

00:42:29.000 Same answer.

00:42:30.000 Looking forward.

00:42:31.000 The answer, of course, is no.

00:42:33.000 Meanwhile, speaking of President Trump, we are now just 11 days from his inauguration, from him officially taking office again.

00:42:41.000 Thank God.

00:42:42.000 Thank God.

00:42:43.000 And the fights over his nominees are breaking out.

00:42:47.000 The question of whether there will be a quick confirmation or not, I think that his nominees will be confirmed pretty quickly.

00:42:53.000 There will be FBI background checks.

00:42:54.000 I think that the Senate is going to insist.

00:42:56.000 And frankly, I think they should.

00:42:58.000 I'm going through all of the information.

00:42:59.000 That is literally their job.

00:43:01.000 The advice and consent process is part of the constitutional process, but they're going to move fast.

00:43:05.000 Democrats, however, are going to do their best to hold up the works.

00:43:08.000 Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is not, in fact, a Native American, she was out there ripping Donald Trump's nominees, suggesting the reason that Donald Trump is talking about Greenland and the Panama Canal is because he's trying to misdirect away from talk about his nominees.

00:43:21.000 Well, no, that's actually, no.

00:43:23.000 No, Senator.

00:43:26.000 I want to make a second point, and that is, why is Donald Trump doing this?

00:43:30.000 And I think the answer is, let's have a big distraction and several more questions so we don't spend more time on Pete Hegseth, the nominee to be the head of the Department of Defense.

00:43:42.000 So we don't spend more time on Tulsi Gabbard, who has been in the pocket of Putin and is not someone who should be trusted with our secrets.

00:43:52.000 So that we don't spend more time.

00:43:55.000 On Robert Kennedy's views on vaccines.

00:43:58.000 In other words, we have a job in front of us right now.

00:44:01.000 And that is advise and consent on the nominees who are there to run our government.

00:44:08.000 Donald Trump would love it if we spend no time talking about them and all of our time talking about this idea and that idea and something else.

00:44:19.000 Well, the plan for Democrats is to create as much chaos as possible.

00:44:22.000 Chuck Schumer is saying as much.

00:44:24.000 According to Axios, he's privately pressing his senators to create fireworks when they question President-elect Trump's nominees in coming weeks.

00:44:31.000 Schumer told his top committee Democrats in a closed meeting, quote, Republicans have spent four years attacking the Democratic brand.

00:44:35.000 We need to use the hearings to begin returning the favor.

00:44:38.000 So he wants them to ask questions of RFK about vaccines.

00:44:41.000 He wants them to ask Pete Hegseth about what the MAGA agenda looks like and all the rest.

00:44:46.000 Good luck.

00:44:46.000 I don't think that's going to have any impact.

00:44:48.000 Meanwhile.

00:44:49.000 Around the world, many world leaders are upset with President Trump for saying obvious things like perhaps the Panama Canal should not, in fact, be under the sway of the Chinese government.

00:44:57.000 The leader of the Panama Canal Authority undenied President Trump's claim that China is controlling the vital trade route on Wednesday.

00:45:04.000 He said Trump's suggestion the U.S. ships get preferential rates will, quote, lead to chaos.

00:45:09.000 Ricoarte Vasquez Morales said, quote, the accusations that China is running the canal are unfounded.

00:45:15.000 China has no involvement whatsoever in our operations.

00:45:18.000 I don't think that's true at all.

00:45:20.000 A Chinese company operates the ports on either end of the canal.

00:45:24.000 The canal itself is run by the Panama Canal Authority.

00:45:27.000 The state entity is selected by the Panamanian government.

00:45:32.000 The foreign minister of Panama said the sovereignty of our canal is not negotiable.

00:45:35.000 It's part of our struggle, our history of struggle.

00:45:37.000 It's an irreversible conquest.

00:45:40.000 I mean, it wasn't really a conquest.

00:45:41.000 We sort of handed it to them under Jimmy Carter, another one of Jimmy Carter's brilliant decisions.

00:45:47.000 You know, Donald Trump certainly has leverage to apply if he wishes to apply it.

00:45:51.000 Applying it not on behalf of seizing sovereignty over the Panama Canal, but on behalf of cutting ties with Chinese companies would be, I think, one very positive impact of the new Trump administration.

00:46:02.000 Meanwhile, other players overseas are very, very upset because, of course, Donald Trump and his allies have been getting involved in foreign policy.

00:46:10.000 The Mexican president has responded to Trump's plan to rename the Gulf of Mexico.

00:46:15.000 By suggesting that they would rename the United States.

00:46:19.000 Well, yeah, good luck with that.

00:46:21.000 Claudia Scheinbaum clapped back at Trump, saying that parts of the United States should be called America Mexicana.

00:46:29.000 Her playful reaction came as Mexico sent serious messages that will defend the human rights of Mexicans in the U.S. who may be abused during Trump's planned mass deportations.

00:46:37.000 So apparently she stood in front of a 1607 map showing the territory of northern Mexico and part of the present-day United States mixed together.

00:46:44.000 Scheinbaum said, without prompting from reporters, the joint region that used to belong to Mexico should be called America Mexicana or Mexican American.

00:46:52.000 Well, I mean, sorry that your country lost.

00:46:56.000 I'm sorry that happened to you.

00:46:57.000 I'm not sorry at all.

00:46:59.000 Honestly.

00:46:59.000 Maybe we should just take Baja in response.

00:47:01.000 As long as we're doing this thing.

00:47:04.000 Meanwhile, on the economic front, the Fed is now suggesting that they're going to hold rates steady for now.

00:47:10.000 It's hilarious.

00:47:11.000 They're willing to ramp up the cuts was running toward re-election or as Kamala Harris was running toward election. 1.00

00:47:17.000 And then the minute Trump was elected, they're like, ah, we're going to slow down on these cuts.

00:47:20.000 So, by the way, it would be a good thing to slow down on the cuts.

00:47:24.000 I think it is good.

00:47:25.000 I do not think that we should be injecting more loose money into the system.

00:47:29.000 The interest rates have been artificially low for decades.

00:47:33.000 And the economy, I think, will do better if we have a predictable regime of interest rates.

00:47:38.000 The Federal Reserve, however, is blaming their lack of cuts on President Trump.

00:47:43.000 The Federal Reserve officials saw risks of higher than expected inflation due in part to potential tariffs by President-elect Trump when they made a finely balanced decision last month to lower the interest rates.

00:47:51.000 But apparently, they say they're not going to cut any further.

00:47:55.000 Again, is that political?

00:47:58.000 Just a little bit.

00:47:59.000 Just a little bit.

00:48:00.000 Alrighty, in just a second, we're going to get into the latest from the UK where the Labour government has now denied a petition to investigate the grooming gang scandal that has plagued the country.

00:48:09.000 For the last couple of decades.

00:48:10.000 If you're not a member, become a member.

00:48:11.000 Use Code Shapiro at checkout for two months free on all annual plans.

The Ben Shapiro Show - January 09, 2025

Why Is California ON FIRE?!

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