Transcription
Will it be the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States? I think it will be in terms of, uh, just the costs associated with it.
We saw an apartment building in Gulo on flames. I saw the fire engine pull up this afternoon. A fire captain had one of his firefighters attach a hose to a hydrant, and that hose didn't fill up. Alex and I asked the captain, "Out of every 10 hydrants you attach to today, on average, how many are you getting full water from?" He says, "Little to none."
There were like 100 people that came up on scooters and were trying to get into any and all houses on the street. Is she strong enough to do this? Or you couldn't carry my husband out of a fire? My response is, "He got himself in the wrong place. If I have to carry him out of a fire..."
California has been a Democratic stronghold since the '90s, but after this, is it going to remain that way? The only way to answer that isn't by conducting some poll. We know from history that polls don't work. The way to do it is to have genuine conversations with real people.
So I flew across the country to do just that. This is the most important video we've ever created. Welcome back to the Nate Fredman show.
So right below me is a food distribution center for the victims of the LA wildfires, and we're going to go talk to some people and see if there's been a political shift in California.
"I lost my home in Pacific Palisades and everything in it. I'm a teacher. I have a voice studio there, and all my students lost their homes. This is my second time. I moved to Pacific Palisades because I was burnt out of Malibu. I thought, 'Oh, you know, I'm so experienced, it won't be so bad the second time,' but it's still awful."
Can you tell me about what the difference in experiences was from the first to the second time this happened to you? "Ah, the first time it was an area of Malibu. This time it's my whole town. It's like an atomic bomb dropped."
Can you tell me about the response from California? I imagine you're dissatisfied with it, but I honestly don't know. So can you tell me about how you feel about it?
"We left very late. We did not leave till 6:30 at night because we weren't aware that everything's kind of hilly there. Just over the hill, everything was gone. So we left quite late, and the disturbing thing is that we didn't really see a lot of fire trucks or police. Once again, nobody evacuated us like the first fire. Nobody evacuated us. If a friend hadn't been calling me repeatedly on my answering machine, 'cause it was early in the morning, I was sick, I was home in bed, actually coming from cancer, and if my friend hadn't been calling me continuously, I would have died. Same thing this time. I wouldn't have known that the neighborhood was on fire. There weren't enough firefighters, basically, and it's not their fault. They did a great job. It's more just not having enough people."
Do you blame the governor? Do you blame the mayor? "The biggest problem is that I don't think there was good infrastructure for fire. The big problem is there was no water in the fire hydrants. There was no water. A lot of people want to blame Karen Bass. A lot of people want to blame, yeah, Governor Newsom. I mean, a lot of people want to blame people. I don't know, that's funny. I mean, I just don't really want to do that. Definitely, I'm unhappy with the response, but I can't blame the firefighters. They work their butt off."
I just heard that they just reduced the number of firemen that we had in Los Angeles. I mean, that's crazy. Yeah, California is known for wildfires. The woman that was in charge of, you know, making sure the fire hydrants had water was being paid $750,000 a year. She still is. Is there an excuse for that? Is there a reason?
"I think she should donate her salary. Yeah, and then they're donating, like, everybody's donating so much money to fire relief. Where does that money go?"
Well, you might be surprised to know that donating your money to the LA wildfires may very well end up in Newsom's pocket. Here's how it worked: he linked the CalFire Foundation, which takes you to ActBlue, a Democratic fundraising website that takes 4% of all transactions. Elizabeth Warren did the exact same thing.
Do you see a changing of the guard coming? Do you think people, like, what are your neighbors saying? Are they saying kind of like they might vote differently now? "They're not going to revote for... oh yeah, I think so. Yeah, yeah, somebody will have to take the fall."
How do you feel about the government's response to these fires? "Um, I would say largely incompetent. I mean, I think they're trying to put them out the best they can, but the preparation was a mess. The empty reservoirs, a mess. Planning to check the fire hydrants in January, which was the middle of fire season, right, made no sense at all. I just think it's a lot of incompetence at the top."
What can be done differently for preparation? Like, what would you have liked to see done differently? "Well, I mean, a lot of what they do is they should have cut back a lot of the vegetation, especially around the neighborhoods, you know, so the fires can burn up to a certain point. Obviously, the reservoirs should have been full. Not that the water was necessarily getting sucked out of them, but there's no reason to have empty reservoirs in LA when we had record rainfall last year. The fire hydrants should have been tested way ahead of time before fire season. They should have had enough firemen. They shouldn't have had, you know, I've heard $17 million cut out of the budget by the city, $100 million cut out of the budget by the state, and that makes no sense. No sense."
How do you feel about those caps that California imposed on the insurance providers? "Well, they got what they asked for. You know, if it's no longer good business for the insurance companies, they're going to leave. So you really have to discuss with them what, you know, what are their limits and what do they think they need. And, you know, it's their option to leave if you drive them out."
Were you guys personally affected by the fires? "We have. We live friends. We weren't. Our family was not. I mean, we had smoke and ash all over our yard. We had friends near Pasadena whose house behind them burned, but theirs didn't. But we personally were not directly affected other than, you know, life in LA has come to a standstill, you know, over this last week."
Right, and our phones are going off at night, emergency false evacuation notifications. "Yeah, what's going on with that?"
That's real people. That's actually happening. "It's actually happening. I mean, they tried to explain it, you know, how the system's set up to go to the cloud and go to towers and go to each, but it's not working."
Yeah, or it wasn't. "Yeah, maybe Karen Bass sent out that evacuation message. I saw them. She was doing a press conference. She said to check out some resources. You can go to URL."
How do you think someone like that got elected? "All of this can be found at URL. She checked all the right boxes for a lot of the voters here."
Yeah, do you think that there's going to be a big political shift after these fires? "I don't know. I mean, more people who are logical thinkers might move out of state, which could be bad for the state. People also might look at, 'Here's what I voted for. Here's what I got,' and maybe we made the wrong choice, and they'll finally see it. Like, if losing your $100 million apartment or house banks you not vote Republican, I don't know what would."
Right. Is there anything else? "I mean, again, I think when it actually... I think a lot of people in Palisades think things are going to affect everybody but them, that they're up in this area, that nothing is going to touch them. And now when government policies severely affected them, they're realizing that their vote matters for them too. You know, it's like if you vote to not prosecute crimes, they're thinking, 'Well, I don't live in somewhere that's very crime-infested anyway.' But like on the news today, the DA was really emphasizing that if you loot, if you light fires, we are going to prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law."
Yeah, shouldn't anyway. What about the rest of the laws? "It's like, yeah, we ignore the rest of the laws, but we're going to take these serious. Like, looting is now illegal because rich people are getting robbed."
Yeah, that's terrible. "Um, yeah, that's very interesting. I mean, I saw Nome said that repealing Prop 47 would be like racist, and now it has been repealed. Voters overwhelmingly wanted looting to become illegal again."
Racist. Everything's racist. Everything's racist. If you don't agree, liberal, it's racist. What do you think about DEI and the fire department? Because it's a big thing right now.
Um, when, wow, statistically, 1.5% of the population are lesbians, and four of the top people in the fire department are... "Yeah, you know, I didn't come up with it, but I read somebody say DEI stands for 'didn't earn it.' When one of these leaders of the fire department said, 'When you're having someone come to the door to rescue you, people want someone who looks like them coming to the door,' it's like, I think you want somebody competent coming to the door, not someone who looks like you."
Yeah, wow. You want to see somebody that responds to your house, your emergency, whether it's a medical call or a fire call, that looks like you? It gives that person a little bit more ease.
When I was going up to interview people outside the evacuation center, I came across something very interesting: a line of people waiting for food that didn't speak any English. "For a press, for a video, YouTube video, English?"
"Don't speak English?" "No."
Okay, do any of you guys speak English? "Does she speak English?" "No."
They were not fire victims and were taking food from the distribution center. "Can you ask them if their house burnt down?" "No."
So your house did not burn down? "Their house did not burn down."
Okay, all right, thank you. Then to do more due diligence, I went to an evacuation shelter. "Are you staying at the shelter here?" "Yes, I have been here since last week."
They mentioned that there's people in there that only speak Spanish, right? Are they migrants, or did they come across the border illegally? "I don't... they came across the border right away and came over here."
Okay, are there people in there that are here illegally? "Um, we don't know 'cause we don't ask."
Okay, it looks like tax-funded money is being funneled into the Red Cross, who is providing food and shelter for illegal migrants that are intended for fire victims. "We're helping serve the fire victims some free meals today."
What did you think about the government response to the fires? Like, what are your thoughts on it? "Um, I mean, I don't have a cent response right now 'cause obviously I'm trying to decompress from work. I think all of us are just really overwhelmed with everything, and there's a lot of misinformation, and that's the biggest problem."
And what is that misinformation? "CU, you're actually on the ground, so..."
Yeah, I mean, there was a lot of misinformation about what water availability was, and I'm thinking more of on the federal level of how our national leaders have been responding and that misinformation rather than probably local information.
Yeah, like the stuff about the fire hydrant not having water and stuff? "Yeah, yeah, and the reason, the source of the fires, um, basically saying that the firefighters don't... I mean, that they don't have what they need. And maybe they don't have exactly what they need, but you know..."
Do you think that California is going to shift closer to the right after this or no? "God, I don't know. I mean, I've been impressed with his response. I think he's been very... he's very eloquent. So I think what he said in trying just to defend California is what we need in a leader. Um, obviously, a lot of things that actually impact the response is on the local level, and I need to get more educated on that. I think I'm just really overwhelmed personally."
I know Nome is putting in $50 million to sort of fight Trump on his policies. Do you think that's a good idea to sort of fight back? "Yes, I think so for sure. I mean, he's targeted California for a million things, um, and yeah, so I think so."
Thank you. So while California is on fire and citizens are losing everything, Nome is allocating $50 million of your tax money to fight Trump. Beautiful dog, and thank you so much for speaking with us. I really appreciate it. Local journalism is alive and well, of course. "Yeah, I'm trying my best."
All right, have a good day. How do you think the government's response has been to this disaster? "Um, well, it seems like I'm not an expert on natural disasters, but it seems that this was, if not avoidable, could have been minimized. And it seems like there were a lot of mistakes: there was an empty reservoir, fire hydrants running out of water."
Um, there's a guy called Rick Caruso who ran for mayor and lost, who was a real estate developer who owns a big outdoor shopping mall in the Palisades and took preventative measures privately, and his property does not have a spot on it. So if that guy were mayor of Los Angeles, maybe the outcome would have been different.
And something interesting about Karen Bass: she said that she would never leave LA when she became mayor, and while the fires exploded, was drinking cocktails in Ghana.
This is... I am still trying to understand the masochism of liberals in California that pay the highest taxes in the country and get treated like [ __ ].
Yeah, why do you think? What's your latest theory on why that's the case? "Because what I see is I see in 2019, since 2019, they've spent $24 billion on homeless, and it's gone up. The homeless issue has gotten worse. Nobody knows where that money is going."
Why do people in California continue to vote liberal if their city is getting worse? "Um, I mean, the $24 billion, there's a homelessness industrial complex that that money goes to. Um, but it's mind-boggling that people continue to vote this way."
When I have conversations with you, I voted for Trump twice, and I'm open about it here. I have a t-shirt that says "Liberals for Trump" that I made just to try because I don't care. I think liberals fundamentally feel guilty.
So you have wealthy liberals in California that are like paying indulgences, like the idea of carbon footprints and all of this stuff. So as long as the politician is pro-choice and seemingly progressive, then that seems to be enough for liberals.
I can't understand how anyone would vote for Gavin Newsom. He's like clearly a sociopath and has... I was thinking about this today. Imagine rising to the position of governor of California, the sixth largest economy in the world, the most beautiful, one of the most beautiful places in the world, and having your legacy be that you created a crime-ridden, bankrupt [ __ ] hole.
This place had a surplus two years ago. Um, so that would disqualify... like Gavin would not be employable in the private sector with that kind of performance, but these people continue to vote for this stuff.
And I've thought about leaving multiple times, but I love it here. I don't want to. So I hope that this disaster might change things and wake people up.
I, in 2016, was like an anti-Trump person and was very upset when he was elected, and then, um, I've changed tune very quickly after seeing him being smeared unfairly, seeing media coverage that's, um, taken out of context, edited. You know, I'm not a Trump psychoan, but he makes people... he makes these people crazy.
Um, and I, you know, the same standard doesn't apply to any Democrat politician like Gavin Newsom, who had an affair with his best friend's wife, who was his campaign manager. I don't know what else somebody could do in terms of character.
Um, and all of Biden's stuff, it's like the worst president in the history of this country and the most corrupt. It's like a criminal. Newsom and Biden have decided on $700 for people that have lost their homes. Is that their dog walker? Because the government's going to give everyone in the Palisades, like, dog walker money?
When you see that the fire department has DEI in it, what's your take on that? "Um, it's absurd. Like, who would you want flying the plane that you're on? The best person for the job? Like, that should apply to everything."
I think it was Malcolm X said, "The most dangerous person to the black person is the white liberal."
Do you feel like California is going to shift Republican now? "Um, locally, yeah. Um, it'll... it's hard to tell. I hope so. I feel optimistic."
Okay, um, and I think someone like Nicole Shanahan could run for governor. Um, the, uh, you know, VP on the ticket for, uh, RFK. RFK, yeah. She's really smart. She's a woman. She's half Asian, so these lunatics can't paint her with the brush that they'd like to.
The MAGA movement in this country is just like a pro-freedom coalition right now. Yeah, um, that respects the Constitution, and then there's the rest of this, like, lunatic leftist commie [ __ ] that has become institutionalized, and this is like the center of it, and it needs to be destroyed.
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And now back to the streets of LA. You know, as our house was burning, I thought, "Where are all the firemen?" But the thing is, it's so huge. The scope is so large. I would have liked to have seen an earlier federal response, like people coming in from all over.
And it took a while for people to come in from the West Coast even. Um, there's, you know, a lot of people are really unhappy, and I just think this is climate change. This is, um, the scope of this is huge. Nobody could have prepared for this.
I understand apparently there are some things they could have done, but I don't know yet. Now is not the time to do all the blaming.
Yeah, and I really hope they put some resources into the recovery 'cause we have lost a lot. I mean, you think that Newsom is partially to blame, or what do you think?
"You know, rumor has it that our forestry has not been good, and that's the cause of it, and I don't know if that's true or not. I know that that's, uh, very political, and that's, um, you know, that's what happened in the last fires when Trump did the blame game."
Yeah, and here I am going talking about that. Um, I just don't think that helps anything. I don't know. I don't think he's to blame. I absolutely don't.
I know that California has been liberal for a long time, has voted liberal for a long time. I spoke to some people that think that there could be a switch potentially. California's pretty divided.
California is divided. It's more divided than people think. "Yeah, oh really? And that's Los Angeles may not be divided."
Okay, and do you think it's going to get more divided after this fire? "Certainly Los Angeles will be."
What have you heard from neighbors, friends? Like, what are people saying? "Newsom should have done better. Um, where were the firefighters? And I'm in that camp. Um, but I just don't think we have the resources. And then you can go to Newsom and say, 'Well, why weren't the resources there?' But we don't have the resources for homelessness. Like, how do you spread them around now? We've had a disaster like this. The resources will hopefully change."
Well, something that confuses me about homelessness, and again, nice to speak to actually someone who lives here, um, that like $24 billion were invested into homelessness, but it seems like, and it is going up. Why? Like, why do you think that is? What's going on?
"I think it's not an easy solution, and people are trying to find a lot of solutions and spending a lot of money trying to find the solutions, and we haven't found it yet."
Next, I went to see if I could get into the Palisades, where the fires really took place, and after being met with a National Guard checkpoint, this is what happened.
"I'm based in New York. This is my chance channel here." "YouTube?" "Are you a YouTuber?" "Yeah."
Um, that's fine. "I'll let the L make that choice."
Okay, all right, thank you. We've gotten updated instructions for everybody that can... "Can I show you that my channel?"
"No, I totally believe. Tell me what happened." "Uh, our house burned, yeah, and I'm a doctor, and I have to go back to work. I have to have a place to stay and a place to live, and so I can't go back to work until I have a place to live."
And how are you dealing with that? Is there hotels that are helping? "Is there like an Airbnb right here, but it's until Sunday, and then I have to figure out what to do."
Okay, 'cause I spoke to some people that are kind of upset about that, the fact that there wasn't water in the hydrants and the fire engines were really late. Are you upset about that at all? "Of course, yeah, of course, yeah, but that's, you know, that will come out, and you know, who figured, you know, whose fault it was."
Do you expect there to be a change in guard of, you know, after Newsom, like that California will shift Republican, or you don't see that happening? "I don't know. Things shift in this world, you know, for whatever reason people will decide to vote for one way or another based on their own needs."
Do you want the government to come in? Like, 'cause you're staying at Airbnb, you're a doctor. In my opinion, it's like, you know, we're giving Ukraine like $200 billion, and you're a doctor. You're here. Like, shouldn't we be giving you more, you think, or what do you think?
"I mean, I mean, 'cause they're giving you $700, right? That's going to geopolitics. That's something that's... your house burnt down, and they're giving you $700, right?"
I don't know if they're giving me... "That's what Biden and the U.S. said: $700 per person that lost their house."
I think it's... I think it's more than that. "That's what they say, but I think it's more than that. But that's something that... but that's something else. That's... I can't... I'm not you. I... I'm not the one to divvy out the money."
Yeah, I saw a video of a village in Japan today of, you know, these water cannons that pop out of the ground. "That's cool."
Um, and just, you know, they're like hyper sprinklers. The village has been there for 250 years. It's in a fire-prone area.
So, yeah, I mean, I think any areas in a disaster-prone state like California, y, you know, could have something like that, um, would probably behoove us.
I mean, even if it's very expensive, it would probably be a lot less expensive than what we're having to deal with right now, which is going to look like almost $200 billion. It's going to be almost $200 billion worth of damage, let alone people's literal lives.
So I think an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. You know, something like this might lean the state to go back red. I mean, California used to be a red state in the 1980s.
Yeah, uh, Reagan is from here. You know, uh, Reagan was a two-term, you know, very conservative Republican president. The state of California is not... um, it wouldn't be the first time it was red. There are things that shift us back and forth.
Um, I'm from Texas originally, red state. Yeah, um, however, you know, there's a lot of Democrats there as well. You know, there's a little bit of all of us everywhere.
I try not to politicize anything. I try to be objective about the truth about the matter of things.
So you mentioned being objective about it versus politicizing it. This is a conversation I think the nation needs to hear, which is like politicizing it, I think, is objectifying in a way because you're looking at who are the people in charge and what do they need to do better.
And if we can't talk about that, then what's the difference between being objective and being, you know, politicizing it? I'd like to hear what your opinion is on what being objective really is.
I think being objective is just being, you know, true to yourself and true to the situation. You know, in this situation, I don't think it would have mattered who was in power unless they would have taken more preventative measures.
But that's a big thing, right? Like, whether or not they would have done that. So you would be okay if the state turned red? "Absolutely. I'm not a party guy. You know, I'm not a... I'm not a blue or red guy. I'm, you know..."
You're independent? "Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I used to be center-left. I'm center-right now just because of the way things have been in the world for so long."
Yeah, well, you being on the center-right, where do you stand on DEI in the fire department? Because it's very controversial. "I don't... I don't like DEI anywhere. I think I believe very strongly in meritocracy. I think that anyone anywhere... I don't... I don't think anyone should not have a job because of their sexuality or their color, but I also don't think they should have it because of it either."
You know, uh, I mean, it's just very basic to me. What you're seeing here is not typical of what Santa Monica, Venice typically looks like. I mean, this is almost like a ghost town.
Yes, there's people out here, but it's like 1% of what's usually out here. You know, it's 1%. I mean, yeah, you know, there's no one out here. Granted, it's a Tuesday afternoon, but you know, I was out here on Sunday, and, uh, you know, we're shell-shocked here.
This is my photo of that morning, like, right, you know, a couple of blocks from where I live. I just walked down, and that's this beach right here.
Yeah, like, that's right outside my building. You could see the plume of smoke. We're about a decade out, I think, before we start to see some sort of normalcy in the city again.
You know, the mass devastation, it's just not... it's not going to happen overnight. It's going to take at least a decade.
While I was flying back to New York, I flew over Colorado and was reminded of the raw beauty of our country once again. I was able to think about each and every interview that we did, and I'm devastated that people lost their homes, but I'm also angry that it took an event like this for people to start seeing that regardless of what position you're in, the politicians we elect matter.
There were warnings directly from personnel in the LAFD just less than a month before the fire started that people would die if they cut the budget. If we cut one position, if we close one station, if we close one resource, the residents of Los Angeles are going to pay the ultimate sacrifice, and someone will die.
The cause of the fire may be natural, but prevention isn't, and it can be done by the right people.
Thank you for watching this special episode of the Nate Fredman show, and as always, I will try and bring you both sides to every important issue that affects our great nation. If you want to see what Americans really think of DEI, just click on this video.