Unprecedented fires burn through unprepared California: "Ran out of water"

From Hyatt. Top Fox News headquarters in New York City. Always seeking solutions, never sowing division. It's Brian Kill Me. Thanks for being here, everybody.

It's the Brian Kill Me Show.

So much going on. Today, for example, Mayor Adams has a state of the city address. Why is that significant? He's under indictment, and it could get worse. I think that's of national interest on normal times.

Memorial service for Jimmy Carter, we understand that. And don't gloss over this. A Capitol police arrested a man yesterday with a machete at the entrance for Jimmy Carter's viewing ahead of Donald Trump's visit. A Virginian man gets arrested there for attempting to set his car on fire right near the Capitol. What is going on here?

What kind of deranged idiot will try to get into the Capitol with the machete? What was he intended on doing? I imagine nothing good. We'll keep an eye on that. But the number one story is well, there's very little doubt to it.

Congressman Mark Greene a little bit later and Ian Bremer standing by. First, let's get to the big three.

Now, with the stories you need to know, it's Brian's big three. Number three. Here's a man who's saying, on the one hand, despite polling, I have no idea what polling he's talking about, that suggests he could have won, and then he turns around and says he's not clear that he could have finished the term.

Well, what kind of a view is that? Britt Yume weighs in. It's a joke. President Biden reflects, and his thoughts and beliefs are as muddled as his presidency. How do you think he'll be remembered?

I have some thoughts. Number two. Then we came here, we had a meeting, but it was a really good meeting, very strong. And we'll get something done. One bill, two bills, doesn't matter to me.

They're going to work that out. But the end result is going to be the same. Trump plots and plans with the Republicans on Capitol Hill as his agenda takes shape, but tactics are still being debated while signs of Democratic cooperation of old people politico show promise. Number So what we are seeing is the result of eight months of negligible rain and winds that have not been seen in LA in at least 14 years. Really?

It's a deadly combination. That mayor is an embarrassment. Worst fires in our nation's history, and the most unprepared state in the country is dealing with it: California. When you run out of water, hours into an epic blaze, you have failed. Your citizens, from billionaire celebrities to working-class families, all agree their lives and lifestyle for the foreseeable future have been destroyed.

And that is the number one story, and there is just no number two story. As much as I'm interested in politics, and so are you, world events are consequential, and I understand that. But when you see thousands of homes just burned to the ground, structures no longer exist, neighborhoods just virtually gone. And a blaze, zero consent, zero percent contained, even though it's been blazing for four days now. Incredible.

So we'll continue to monitor that. And the mayor back in town after going to Ghana and the governor blaming local officials for running out of water. When you plug, put it this way: Pacific Palisades. Let's say you have a $3 million home, $3 million. You're paying, if it's like the New York tax rates, you're probably paying $60,000.

In taxes? You would think that if a fire truck finds your neighborhood and puts the hose onto the hydrant, water would come out a couple of hours into a fire.

Well, you would think, but the answer is no. Ian Bremer joins us now, President and Founder of Eurasier Group. And just one of the deepest thinkers, most respected guys around when it comes to international affairs. Ian, welcome back. Brian, always good to see you.

First off, on California, the whole world's watching this, correct? Um I wouldn't go that far. I mean, if you're Greenland or Panama or Canada right now or South Korea right now, I mean, there are a lot of things that are more significant in their own backyards, so not quite. But look, for me, the best news there is that the winds seem to be dying down a little bit today. And I hope, I hope, I hope that means that we're going to get a little bit better news because it's been nothing but catastrophe for the last several.

Yeah, and the response is just embarrassing. Ian, let's talk about the world. You write down the top risks, the Eurasia Group's top risk for 2025. And you write, number one, you think we're entering the most dangerous period of world's history on par with the nineteen thirties and Cold War. You think more today than even two or three years ago when the Russians first invaded?

You know, it's really interesting because last year we had these big wars, right? And frankly, if I look ahead to 2025, it's more likely Russia-Ukraine becomes a ceasefire. It's more likely Gaza and Hezbollah actually winds down. And everyone was worried about the U.S. election, but actually, Trump's election was much more seen as a legitimized one than either Biden's or Trump's were the last two times around.

So, I mean, you have, in a sense, less fighting internally too, you know, more consolidation.

So, shouldn't 2025 look better? And the answer is not really. And it's because we're really on the global stage, we're kind of entering or returning, if you will, to a law of the jungle. Where there's a lack of global leadership and everyone's sort of in it for themselves, whether it's America first, or Canada first, or China first, or Russia first. And in the law of the jungle, it's great to be the apex predator.

Right? I mean, that that is that is who you want to be. And so there's a lot of benefits for the United States. Trump is going to get a lot of wins on the global stage as other countries, adversaries and allies don't want to get in a fight with him. But in terms of dealing with global challenges, Nobody wants to do that.

And that means that we're going to see a lot more instability, a lot more volatility, a lot more conflict globally in the coming year. Hmm. In a way, yeah, I mean, both things could be true. I guess you could be looking at a CISA, the firing with Gaza and Lebanon. At the same time, there could be a lot of potential for major conflict.

I think the one is Taiwan. I think it seems like China gets closer every day to trying to take back that island. What kind of job have we done in delivering the weapons that Taiwan has paid for? We've done a pretty good job. I mean, it's certainly true that you talk to the heads of the U.S.

military-industrial companies, and they'll tell you that China's spend and its location is overwhelming what Taiwan is capable of doing themselves.

So, in an actual fight between the two, the United States is not going to do an effective job defending Taiwan. That's the view. They're not going to say that publicly, but that's their expectation. I do think that U.S.-China relations are on a path to get a lot worse this year. You know, you've got, if you think about the people that are in the Trump administration, whether it's Marco Rubio or Mike Waltz, people you and I both know and respect, they have a pretty hawkish sensibility on China across the board, whether it's the South China Sea and the ludicrous nine-dash line, whether it's on changing the status quo with Taiwan and pushing back against that, whether it's on trade and technology.

And while Trump is always interested in cutting a deal, I mean, he's the guy that met with Kim Jong-loon. No one else was willing to do it. He's the guy that invited Xi Jinping to his inauguration. No one else did that. But he is also intending to put tough tariffs on China.

I don't think that's a fake out. I think he's going to do it. And I think he's also intending to stop the Chinese from sending goods through third countries like Mexico. Vietnam, India to the United States. And this is going to come at a time that the Chinese economy is really not performing well.

So I suspect we are heading closer to a trade war To a decoupling between the two most important economies in the world, and that's going to have knock-on economic implications for all sorts of folks everywhere. You know what's interesting, I can't think of a Democrat that really is against being tough on China.

So I think they might be able to unify on that. I mean, maybe you could find one or two. And I mean, look, Elon Musk, obviously, he's very tough on the Brits. He's very tough on the Germans, on the French. I've never seen him say a bad thing about China because he does a lot of business there.

It'd be interesting if he maintains silence on that now that he's playing such a more active role as sort of the bomb thrower in chief for the Trump administration. But everybody else, including the Democrats, I mean, you remember, Biden was the one trying to prevent Nancy Pelosi when she was speaker from going to Taiwan, softly, softly. And Nancy said, absolutely not. I'm going.

So I think that China policy is one of the foreign policies in the United States that frankly is most bipartisan. And one of the reasons why I expect the relationship will deteriorate is because the Chinese leadership, Xi Jinping, his foreign minister Wang Yi and others, when they look at the U.S., they say, we don't really have any good options here. They all want to contain our rise. Nobody trusts us. Nobody wants to work with us.

So we're going to have to. make our own way. And that and that does mean a decoupling, right? For thirty-five years the world benefited from globalization, but it left a lot of damage. Right?

I mean, there's global economic growth, but middle classes, working classes in the US said, well, what about our jobs? You know, what about us? And I mean, you have, you remember Robert Lighthizer when he was US trade rep, he said, I'd much rather have a family where people have jobs and one TV than no jobs and two TVs. And he grew up in former industrial Ohio, not so much anymore.

So I think that there are a lot of Americans around the country in the same way that they feel very negatively about all of the illegal immigration because they think they're taking their jobs. And a lot of those came in legally. Um, they're feeling very badly about sort of giving the store to the Chinese over the last 35 years, and the only people benefiting were the shareholders with a lot of capital. I was thought I got guys like you. Because you you know, you you run with really important Figures on the international stage.

And when I was going through college, and when we were even in high school, they talked about the benefits of international trade, bringing world peace because we're going to be doing business with each other. And when you do business, you're less likely to fight, you create relations, and you depend on each other, less likely to have another world war. And the first time Trump came up and said, NAFTA bad idea, when George H.W. Bush brought it up and Clinton executed it, I thought, uh-oh, and George W. Bush was for it.

And the theory was: well, Americans don't want to do those jobs, and they moved out, and the prices have come down.

So the benefit is the prices have come down. And we let other people who have less stringent labor rules build our stuff and let's not ask questions. And now There's a re-examination of all that. And the question is: why did we lose these jobs? Why did these international trade deals go amiss?

And besides places like Pittsburgh, most of these cities have not rebuilt and found something else to do with their factories. Why did we allow America's semiconductor industry completely exported off of China's coast? I mean, that was easily as strategically stupid as Germany deciding to rely for their energy needs on Russia. I mean, it's not, so it's not like we're the only ones that do this, but it's very short-sighted and people get angry. But I would say, yeah, Taiwan, we always looked at it as an ally, but there's always a danger of them being invaded, is what you're saying.

I understand that.

So, having said that, there's a lot of sense. Like, the Democrats go, how do we lose the working class?

Well, the guy in office keeps talking about bringing jobs back, and he actually tried to execute on with the South Korean trade deal with the USMCA, trying to. To redo the European trade deal with friends and with enemies.

So I find it just a fascinating time.

So, just to take the most of our conversation. I also thought about you when it comes to the Middle East. If I told you a year ago that Hezbollah would be decapitated and Hamas would be on life support and Iran's missile defense would be down, they'd lose access to Syria as an ally. You'd say, Brian, there's no way that's going to happen. It's impossible.

But that's when Netanyahu was really pulled off. Whiplash from Israel, right? Because before October 7th, we all viewed Israel as being the gold standard for military capabilities in the Middle East, for border defense, for intelligence, for surveillance, the gold standard. And they were the ones engaged in all sorts of, you know, espionage, very effective assassinations and, you know, hitting nuclear scientists in Iran, everything else. Then October 7th happened.

We're like, whoa, like, how could Hamas possibly pull this off against Israel? And, you know, the answer was Israel took their eye off the ball. They were focused on the West Bank. They were focused on democracy and judicial reform. But then Iran focused, then Israel focused.

And when they're focusing their capabilities, they are dominant in the entire region. And that has not only meant the destruction of Hamas with lots of knock-on destruction across Gaza, but also the destruction of Hezbollah. The decapitation of Hezbollah and the inability, I mean, this was Hezbollah. Was the most powerful non-government military in the world, and they now are destroyed. And and Iran Used to have an axis of resistance that allowed them to project power.

It was an empire inside the Middle East. With the exception of the Houthis in Yemen, who are kind of the most autonomous of them, that's all gone. Assad overthrown, and that means that they can't even, Iran can't even get weapons to Hezbollah and Lebanon anymore.

So, I mean, I think you went from 2024 when the Middle East war you and I talked about at the time was very likely to escalate and intensify to 2025, where the real question is not about Lebanon and Gaza. The real question is, will the Israelis and the Americans decide at a moment of unprecedented Iranian weakness to take out their enemy? That's the actual risk in the Middle East. And it's not a risk about what the Iranians will do. It's a risk about whether or not the Americans and Israel decide that it's the right time to do that.

Well, Macron said yesterday, the day before. That they're racing towards a nuclear weapon, they might be on an irreversible path. It makes me think action's got to be done, even maybe before the 20th. Who knows? Lastly, just project for me: will we in the next six months see emissaries from Russia and Ukraine talking with Kellogg or a Trump emissary, whether it's Rubio, and talking about ending the violence?

Will there be a significant? I think we will.

Now, the US has a lot more leverage over Ukraine. Than Russia. And Zelensky has made clear that with Trump coming in, he knows that he has to start talking. He knows that that's going to have to include territorial concessions on a ceasefire because he can't get the land back that Russia has taken. That's also created some desperation.

That's why he's recently expanded his operations in Kursk inside Russia, because he wants to have something to trade with Putin. Trump has recognized, I mean, I know he keeps saying it's going to be done in a day. But since he won the presidency, he has admitted to some European leaders that it's more complicated than he thought with the Russians. And you may remember, he tweeted that China could help. On Ukraine, which I think surprised a lot of people.

But the fact is the Chinese have more leverage over Putin than the United States does. But I think it's very clear that both countries need. To stop the fighting to the degree that it's been going on the last couple of years, that they just don't have the troops to continue to send into the wood chipper. And Trump is in a very powerful position to call for a ceasefire. That doesn't mean a negotiated settlement.

It doesn't mean that sanctions will come off Russia. I don't think this will be a sustainable peace, but I think the fighting, they will certainly negotiate. And if you made me bet, Brian, I think that we will have a ceasefire at some point this year. Wow. Ian Bremer, he makes his projections on his Eurasia site, and he's always at the cutting edge with his G0.

Ian, thanks so much. Brian, great to see you, man. All right. We'll come back. We'll open up the talks.

We'll talk more about the advancing wildfires, the damage being done, and also what was accomplished behind closed doors yesterday with Trump and his Republican Senate friends. Don't move. It's Brian Killmead. Fox News Audio presents the Fox Nation Investigates Podcast. The Menendez Brothers.

Monsters or Misunderstood? We have evolved to understanding that this type of stuff would happen. Judge Jeanine Piro and a panel of experts break down the Menendez Brothers' new fight for freedom, and their defense attorney explains why he's optimistic he can clear their names. Are these convicted killers monsters or just misunderstood? Listen and follow at FoxtrueCrime.com or wherever you get your favorite podcasts.

From his mouth to your ears, it's Brian Killmead. Hey, welcome back, everybody. Just amazing what's going on right now because. You watch people like The Billy Crystal. I imagine Jennifer Aniston.

James Woods. Um You know, people that we know or know of or know their accomplishments, Steven Spielberg, I mean, I think it's going to come out that all everything that they lost that they had is gone.

Now, the good news for them is oftentimes they have the best insurance. State Farm or others pulled out a short time ago, and 1.8% of all insurance holders were informed through no actions of their own that they were no longer going to be covered over the last two years. And why? Because in California, the way I understand it, they came out of the rule: stop raising the rates. On customers.

And then the insurance companies go, really? We can't raise the rates on customers?

Well then, I'm leaving the state. You know, because the fires. A lot of people left Florida. Because of the floods. Hurricanes.

And what happens is you get notified and they move on, or the rates go really high, and it makes it almost impossible to have. Then you have a decision to make. But what they have to understand is there's a reaction. uh in business to everything you do with the government. A talk show that's real.

This is the Brian Kill Me Show. Hey, welcome back, everybody. We have a lot to discuss today. We're still following the fires. We're seeing the battle between Governor Newsom and President Trump.

President Trump's outrage. He's been saying as early as 2016, he said, What's going on with California in the water? In 2018, he actually saw one of some of the wildfires in the middle of the forest, and he's sitting there with the governor at his side saying, You guys got to take care of this forest. You make everything worse. Look at what Finland does.

You know, look at what other countries say. Look at what Canada is doing to make sure that if there is a fire, the damage is minimal. Thinning it out. And then this time there's no water. And the President went out of his way in twenty twenty to make sure water from California was coming from Northern California predominantly at the risk of some s environmental fish, some fish that might have been might have been endangered.

Smelts I don't know what the poro is. And they reversed it. Joe Biden and Governor Newsome endorsed reverse it. They said, we're going to get our we're going to keep the smelt fish and we're going to use a one hundred and thirteen year aqueduct to predominantly give water to Southern California.

Well, how did that go? With me right now is Congressman Mark Greene. Of course, this is a topic around the country, especially in Washington. Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee with the brand new Congress. Chairman, welcome back.

Your thoughts about what's happening in the West Coast to start. Yeah, I mean I mean, it's a reflection of how liberal policies just don't work. I mean, they don't work for the energy sector, they don't work for I mean, they think all in the name of their God, the you know, the green New Deal and climate that they Um Don't take care of their forests the way other states do. They don't do controlled burns. They don't do forestry management.

And this is what they get. And then, of course, the water issue is another Insane, absolute insane problem that they created themselves. And then you got the mayor. Who decides to cut the fire department's, I think, $17.5 million this last year. I mean, it's just this is this is what liberals do.

They they defund the police, they defund the fire department. The people who really want to serve, they they they don't like those people. They don't like the military. They they they I mean, it's it's just this is who they are. This is the consequence, one of many.

I mean, you can look at San Francisco and the feces and hypodermic needles laying all over the street. That's liberal policy. And now People have died, and there's been hundreds of thousands, I mean, millions of dollars worth of damage. This is liberal policies, America.

So Governor Newsom yesterday went by Anderson Cooper. You know what's going on? People say there's no water at the hydrants. He said, Well, that's a local issue. You're in the military, Mark.

You have a rich military background. Does that have anything to do with any of the leadership seminars that you've been through? When in doubt, blame people underneath me? Yeah. Yeah.

Uh I think it was Theodore Roosevelt who uh you know first Um You know, said the buck stops here. I think it was him. Truman, but he's the same philosophy. same philosophy. I mean, it you know, you gotta own responsibility.

You you you pass praise down and uh you you take the heat. You take the the negatives when the the negatives are there. Um when praise comes, you pass it down. But the I mean, that's again, you know, it's Gavin Newsom.

Well, I mean, we can't expect anything different. Absolutely.

So, no one's going to forget what happened last week with the terror attack in New Orleans. Interesting revelations now. People say, you know, why didn't you know more about this guy? Uh this Jabbar, he goes over to Egypt. And he disappears for a month, then he goes to Canada, then he goes to Tampa.

What was he doing? Who was he carousing with? And wasn't there a time in which the intelligence agents in Egypt would alert us?

Now you got this American with a military background, recently converted back to a Muslim, hanging out in some bad neighborhoods. And it turns out maybe you're getting indications that the FBI knew something about him and submitted a travel lookout record prior to his j uh december thirty first attack. Yeah, that's a good idea. we're going to have to dig into what the FBI knew and didn't know. And that's going to take Congress doing its oversight mission.

The Judiciary Committee and Jim Jordan will definitely dig into this. Um And look, the fusion centers and what the FBI has done, they've caught some bad guys. But what happened right after nine eleven is the they were much more human intelligence oriented on the potential, particularly Islamic threats like this guy, right, the Islamic jihadists. And they relaxed on that. Obama first did it.

And pulled the DOJ back from that human. When I say human intelligence, I mean They had people in mosques. And we're talking to communities, et cetera, right? That human uh human Intel is gone now.

So we're not picking that piece up. On the SIGINT side, the SIGINT side should have caught this guy too, and they didn't. And we've got to dig into that and find out why this got missed.

So there's a lot of oversight coming, and I think that'll happen between DOD, which is Haas House Armed Services Committee, and Judiciary. Don't you also think, Chairman, That you put it's time to put together a blue-chip committee on terrorism experts from Ray Kelly to. To on down, to go around to these cities, big and small, and make them justify and bring to light their way of securing. in case of an attack. And when we see how inept the superintendent was in New Orleans, how the idiotic statements on why certain things didn't work, like the Bollards, as well as not implementing some of these blockers correctly from Meridian, I mean, shouldn't there be a immediate push to make sure big and small cities are ready for the next attack?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the after action report on particularly the way they block those streets, there there will be a lot of lessons learned to get communicated to cities all over the country. And you're right, that failure to take care of the sidewalk I mean, when a vehicle can just drive around it like that, that's not a blocked street. And people People don't understand the mind of of evil people. And and they you know, they just don't think like a military person would to get three hundred and sixty degree perimeter security.

It's just like the failure of the Secret Service at uh Butler, you know, to to leave that building. Uh with a line of sight to the to where the President was. I mean, all of all of that. And so lessons learned will come from this. We'll send it out to the cities and the cities have got to act.

That would be a big benefit. And we'll talk about all that, but I do want to talk about what was happening yesterday on Capitol Hill. I know the Senate side was meeting with the President. Here's what he said: cut 27. Then we came here, we had a meeting, but it was a really good meeting, very strong.

And uh we'll get something done. One bill, two bills, doesn't matter to me. They're going to work that out. Uh but the end result is going to be the same. Your thoughts?

About that, because one bill they say is better for you guys, because not everybody agrees. And if you give something, everybody, something they want and something maybe they don't want, they'll sign off on it. But if you just ask them to back tax reform, there's a lot of Republicans, believe it or not, there was a couple of dozen last time in the House that didn't like President Trump's tax reform. Maybe they don't want to bolster the border. Maybe they don't want to bolster defense.

They think it's too much spending. And they feel it's like uh I guess the working theory is the speaker says if I put everything in, people could say at least I got something. Yes.

So when you have such a thin margin, Obviously, any two votes or three votes can kill the whole effort, right?

So you have to there's more negotiations that have to go into that, and you're going to have to do it in as big a package, the first package as possible. But it's important to note in the comparison to Trump 1.0, the Congress then had people who actually voted no for things because they didn't like Trump, and these were Republicans. The Republicans that are in the House now specifically are much more pro-Trump in Trump 2.0.

So you don't have the Trump haters as much inside the the Congress. Uh amongst the Republicans, like you did back when Paul Ryan was the Speaker. And so, one, What Trump wants. We're going to deliver that agenda because of the overwhelming victory and what the American people said when they elected him this time. And the House is better supportive of President Trump this time around.

But yes, it's going to have to be as big a package as possible because the seat that Brian Fitzpatrick sits in is way different than the seat that I sit in. And when we're representing our districts, we have to represent those people too, because that's the whole point of a republic and a representative democracy.

So the Democrats, they vote their ideology. They don't care what the people back in their districts say. We vote for our districts as much as we possibly can in this situation. But very clearly, look, it's the Trump agenda, and we're going to get it done. And the best way to get it done from the House's perspective with such a thin margin is as big a first bill as possible.

Gotcha. Also, President Trump has been speaking in a press conference and in interviews about the Panama Canal and Greenland. Here's what he said yesterday, Cut 28. They don't treat us fairly. They charge more for our ships than they charge for ships of other countries.

They charge more for our Navy than they charge for Navies of other countries. They laugh at us because they think we're stupid. But we're not stupid anymore.

So, the Panama Canal is under discussion with them right now. They violated every aspect of the agreement, and they've morally violated it also. And I like that he called out China that's controlling both ends of it.

So, your thoughts about a plan of action from statements that are correct, by the way, from statements that are correct to action.

So we give a lot of support to Panama. I mean, I was down there a year, maybe two years ago, and Seventh Special Forces Group was there. The X the Special Operations Unit that I was I served in, the Nightstalkers, they were down there doing training with the Panamanian Air Force, our helicopter guys. Look, the Panama, other countries all around the world have taken advantage of the United States. And the United States has provided security and freedom to these countries.

And we get And so I agree that the President is right. These things have to be addressed, this imbalance. I mean, we can't continue. We're bankrupt with $37 trillion in debt, a devaluing dollar because the BRICS are trying to dump the dollar and create other mechanisms for, I mean, this is 40% of the world's GDP, right?

So we've got to act. We've got to act and demand that people treat us the same as they treat everybody else, especially if we're going to turn around and provide military security to these guys.

So I mean, the President's point, and with Greenland, look, the polar ice caps are melting. The lanes are opening up. Russia and China are in those. If we can strike a deal with Greenland, let's strike a deal with Greenland, whatever it looks like. I hear you.

It doesn't have to be ownership. I mean, there could be territorial status. We could build up our bases there. Obviously, they've got a deal in 2008. Of course, I wouldn't know this until I started looking at Greenland.

2008, they took control of their own affairs, but foreign affairs are handed by Denmark.

Well, you know what? The Danes.

So, okay, who's got a better military? Who's closer? You know, so I mean, what's in their best interest?

So, obviously, we're very friendly with a NATO nation like Denmark. They're great. We have no problem with them. But there could be something that worked out there. I think it could be a huge positive.

But I want you to hear what Tom Swazi, a Democrat, told me. Saw the story in the Politico saying that the days of just protesting Trump and fighting against him are really. Over. And they're seeing that there's no more parades against them, like the Women's March. And they're already seeing some Republicans go along, the Democrats going along with the Lake and Riley Act, including Tom Swasey in the House.

Listen to what he said yesterday, cut 32. Listen, I'm going to fight. President Trump, when I disagree with him. When he was the president the first time, I didn't agree with him trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. I didn't agree with deporting the DREAMers, and I'll fight back on that stuff.

But I supported him when he wanted to move the embassy, American Embassy to Jerusalem. I supported him on the Abraham Accords. Worked with them on the First STEP Act, which was like a criminal reform thing. I voted for the The big vote yesterday.

So, I mean, when I can do it, I'm going to do it, especially if that's what my people want. Do you believe it? Number one, number two, do you think other people feel that way if you do believe it?

So Swazi is a different kind of Democrat. And I have had great discussions. He sits on my committee on Homeland Security about securing the border. And to have a Democrat, you know, Really, I want to work to secure the border is a massive unicorn. Um so he's a unique guy, and I would not use him.

As an example of some movement amongst the Democrat Party to suddenly they're going to actively work against Trump's nominees. They're going to and they have a plan that they're executing to do that, just as disruptive as they were the first time around. But they are in a place as a party where they're trying to figure out who they're going to be. And the Gavin Newsoms and the folks that are the real crazies out there that have taken over that party's messaging, they're fighting amongst themselves about what that ultimate messaging is going to be.

So I think right now you're probably hearing less anti-Trump stuff as they kind of figure themselves out. But Swazi is an outlier. And as a Democrat on my committee, I'm glad to have him on my committee. He's pretty easy to work with. Quear is good too, on the border.

Queyar is great, especially on the border. Right. I I just hope you know I I saw that Senator Mark Laymullen was on with me today. He says he has Democrats and Republicans over his house once a week to talk about how they can get along. I think the American people really want that.

Conservatives really want that too. Because you know you can't get everything. You know, so my hope is people know he's only got four more years left. Why are you fighting Trump? That day's sale.

Just go out there and try to make the country better. Yeah, exactly. No, I started this club when I first got into Congress called the Reagan O'Neill Club. We first started with eight Democrats and eight Republicans. You can't talk politics, you can only You know, talk about each other, figure out have relationships.

We might serve a little brown water from Tennessee, too. But it's now 50 and 50, and we've got, I mean, it's a great organization of just trying to build friendships. Congressman Mark Greene, always great having you on. I'll see you in Washington next week.

Sounds good, Brian. Take care. Back in a moment. You're with Brian Kilmead. A radio show like no other.

It's Brian Kilmead. Do you owe citizens an apology for being absent while their homes were burning? Do you regret cutting the fire department budget by millions of dollars, Madam Mayor? Have you nothing to say today? Have you absolutely n nothing to say to the citizens today?

That is uh Sky News who found mayor ba uh mayor Bass, Karen Bass, coming back from Ghana, even though she was told there were high wind warnings and high-risk time to leave, she said, Well, I'll be in touch. I'm going to go to Ghana for a ceremonial swearing-in or an inaugural on something on a tax break. You think she's taking money out of her own, uh, put it on her own American Express? No way.

So she decides, as mayor of Los Angeles, I got to go to Ghana during this high-risk time. And she cuts her trip short, comes back, and is confronted by the fact that she, her budget, cut firefighters' overall budget by $17 million. You know what her proposal was? $23 million. You know what she pays for overall?

$819 million for the firefighter budget, which is dramatically. underfunded and they don't have enough people. Nobody thinks they do. But do you know that Homeless gets over a billion.

So, the budget of the firefighters of all of Los Angeles, where if anyone knows anything about Southern California, all they do is have fires. All of Los Angeles County. They're paying more for homeless. They get 65% of the homeless budget.

Now, good news is there's plenty of money there because we got so many more homeless in Southern California thanks to her small firefighter budget. From the Fox News Radio Studios in Midtown Manhattan, it's the fastest-growing radio talk show. Brian. In Kill Mead. Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

It's the Brian Kilmey Show. I'm Brian Kilmey at 48th and 6th in Midtown Manhattan, heard around the country, around the world, and just marveling at the fact that Jimmy Carter's funeral at the age of 100, you don't mourn. You look back at his life, in my view, and I'm sure your view too. Got 11 pallbearers. They're all his grandkids, evidently, or somehow related directly to him.

And the fascinating shot is now, you got all the presidents. This is so cool. If you love history, you love this. Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, Laura Bush, then Barack Obama, no Michelle Obama, and George, and then Donald Trump and Melania.

Now, the thing that I find fascinating. is it looked like Trump and B Obama were talking for about I don't know. Uh four minutes, five minutes. I cannot wait to find out what that's about. You know that Trump will tell you, unless it's top secret.

And you don't talk about top sugar things at a funeral. Then Kamala Harris sits there with Doug. Yes, they're still married. And then Joe Biden saying I could have won. Joe Biden, although I probably wouldn't have lived.

He actually had that message. Uh he's sitting next to Jill, and Joe Biden will give the eulogy. I think Obama should be ready to come out of the bullpen at any moment.

So we'll give you the latest on that, but that's not part of the big stories. Of course, we're talking about the wildfires, what happened behind closed doors yesterday, and Joe Biden's long interview with Susan Page of USA Today. Mark Thiessen, why did Joe Biden not speak to you? You got right for the Washington Post. You're tall.

You are Fox News contributor, successful author. Wouldn't you have liked to give the last interview of Joe Biden as president? I think he should probably just go very quietly. I mean, do you see him at the fire in Los Angeles the other day talking about how he's a great grandfather now? I mean, just like nobody cares.

Nobody cares about your great-grandchild. Their houses have burned down. And you're sitting there talking about, oh, and I'm a great-grandfather today. That's what I'm going to remember this day for. It's like, well, I'm going to remember this day.

It's the day my house burned down. And By the way, this is a guy who doesn't even recognize one of his grandchildren. He's never met her because she's like the black sheep love child of his son Hunter. And so he literally wrote her out of the family.

So spare me your being a great-grand, great-great-grandfather. No, I know. And the thing is, he gave an interview with Susan Page. And Susan Page said, you know, do you think you could have won? He goes, yeah.

He goes, I think I really could have won. And then she says, Well, would you think you can survive? You would have survived? He says, I don't know. Who the hell knows?

Okay, fantastic. I don't know that I would have lived, but I know I would have won. And by the way, did you talk to your lead poster about this? No, I didn't.

So of almost everybody saying it is. even Democrats said I've never seen a poll that said Joe Biden was going to win, even before the debate, on pure performance. Like he earned that lack of dedication and loyalty, and he says he's hoping he wishes his only regret is that he didn't get the projects that he got funded moving quick enough. He gave fewer sit-downs than anyone, including Reagan. He never gives a press conference.

Even yesterday, not a press conference afterwards. He says he wishes his legacy. He says that I came in, I had a plan, how to restore the economy and reestablish America's leadership in the world. That was my hope. I mean, you know, who knows?

And I hope it records that I did it with honesty and integrity. No, you didn't. Honesty and integrity, are you kidding me? You're lying to the end. You lied in the beginning to get the job.

You lied about the laptop and all your international business dealings. You lied about no generals telling you what could go wrong in Afghanistan. You're slow-walking weapons in Ukraine, extending the bleeding, never anticipating that Russia would invade again. But, you know, out of all the stories, it's just one story I don't want to bury because he's about to go 10 days out, and he was about to go to Italy. Thank goodness he canceled that.

But then he goes and holds a press conference. Mark, doesn't he understand when you blow off the press, you're blowing off the people? That the press just are when people are really not about him or her, it's about us. But he can't do it. He can't do it.

I mean, you go back Peggy Noonan pointed this out in her column a couple of weeks ago. Go and watch Ronald Reagan's final press conference. And everyone says, oh, you know, this is not the first time we've had a president who's sort of, you know, in mental decline. Watch Ronald Reagan's final press conference and ask yourself, could Jib could could Joe Biden do that today? He can't.

Uh he's not mentally fit for the job. And the idea that this man who we're seeing falling asleep at a table of world leaders in Africa can't deliver a sentence, is telling people who have just had their homes burned down about his new great-grandchild, tell me he could have searched four more years. Even if he'd lived. He would have he would have he would have he would have been taken out under the 25th Amendment, or he would have had to resign. You know, so the the idea and I'll I will tell you, you know, today is the the funeral of Jimmy Carter.

The one gr good thing for Jimmy Carter of having lived as long as he did is he lived long enough to see someone else seize the mantle of the worst president in modern American history. Because I mean, if you the parallels between the Carter years and the Biden years are uncanny. I mean, we had runaway we have runaway inflation, skyrocketing gas prices, an expansion of Russia invading its neighbors, Americans held hostage by terrorists in the Middle East. A weak president begging OPEC to increase oil production and an embarrassing presidential relative doing business with dictators. It's been like the Carter years all over again, except Biden is less popular than Carter was when he left office.

So it's kind of the comparison is kind of unfair to Jimmy Carter. Biden is either praying or sleeping. I pray that he's praying because if he sleeps right before the whatever. I want to talk about what's happening on the West Coast. It's so horrific.

Thankfully, the numbers are low in terms of people that lost their lives. It's at five. But the number is zero contained, zero, zero percent. Contained. And Donald Trump has made it clear he knows exactly who to blame.

Cut one. For California, we take care of the whole state.

So, what's happened is a tragedy, and the governor has not done a good job. With that being said, I got along well with him when he was governor. We worked together very well, and we would work together. I guess it looks like we're going to be the one having to rebuild it. But what happened there, I don't think there's anything that I've ever seen quite like it.

And the insurance companies are going to have a big problem because you're talking about big, big dollars. Right. And he went on to say that his philosophy of holding, you know, of trying to survive the smelt fish. Is the reason why they're not getting a significant amount of water from Northern California that he wants to flow downstream. Instead, they want to use an aqueduct that's 113 years old that's more environmentally sensitive.

So, Trump has been saying this forever. Your thoughts about this debate?

So the the people of California are paying a terrible price For incompetent left-wing leadership. The left, they all want to say, oh, global warming is causing all these more fires and increasing the fire risk and all the rest of it. You know what? You don't get to use global warming as a get-out of jail free card because let's say you're right. If you believe global warming is increasing the fire risk, then it's your job to increase your mitigation efforts.

It's your job by clearing the brush and filling the reservoirs and having controlled burns so that there's no, so it doesn't go up in a second. And they have not done any of that. Gavin Newsom has put more effort into banning gas-powered cars than he has into filling the reservoirs and clearing the brush to fight the fires. He's fighting global warming instead of fighting fires. Your job is governor of California.

You're the governor. You're not the president of the United States. Your job is not to fight global warming. Your job is to mitigate the effects of global warming on your citizens.

So even if you accept the idea, if you believe global warming is real and it's increasing this fire risk, then you should be doing everything you can to mitigate. The effects of that if there's more fire risk. You shouldn't be diverting water into the Pacific to protect a smelt. You should be making sure that there's enough water. Your job, you know, just like mayors, your job is to make sure that fill the potholes, right?

Your job as governor is to fill the reservoirs. Your job is to make sure that every fire hydrant has water in it when the fire comes. And if you're not doing that, no one gives a crap about what you're doing about to fight global warming. If anything, you're just focused on the wrong problem. Yeah, absolutely.

And the thing is, we know, and I just went over this with the audience previous hour, but that they cut $17 million out of the budget, added to the homeless budget. And then Karen Bass wanted to cut $23 million out of the budget.

So it's 65% of the homeless budget. Think about that. Knowing a place that is known more for its fires than it is for the Hollywood sign, what are you thinking? Dr. Human Humati was on with us this morning.

He believes he lost his house, but he's out in California, and he says this about what the problem is: Cut 14. The fire department is understaffed. They're short on air resources, short on individuals, short on trucks, short on water, of all things. This is something that we predicted, something we knew would happen. I took my family up to a mountain in the Palisades overlooking the whole community.

And actually showed them. And I said these words about six months ago: this place will all burn. And it did. And he went on to say this: cut 15. This was one of the biggest tragedies of COVID: they got rid of so many firefighters who were young, healthy people who were never at risk of COVID to begin with.

People who work outdoors for the most part anyway, never exposed in a meaningful way, and told them, unless you get this vaccine that you don't necessarily need, you're out. And guess what happened? They either fired them or, worse, they left and went to other fire departments, abandoning Los Angeles, leaving LA with a major shortage that lasts to this day. Even on top of that, again, with the budget cuts, even if they wanted those people, they don't have the money for them anymore. You talk about a Seinfeldian-like full circle of ineptness, inadequacy, and incompetence.

That's it. Here's the irony. She cut millions and millions, tens of millions of dollars from the fire budget in order to fight homelessness. And the result is more homelessness because people's houses have burned down. The whole Pacific Palisades is homeless now because they didn't have the firefighters to save their homes.

So I mean, you can't make this up. It's and and I'll tell you, honestly, you know, I'm I I've my heart breaks for everybody who loses their home and is going through this tragedy, but my heart breaks especially for the people uh in Los Angeles who didn't vote for these idiots. Yeah. You know, because honestly, you know, if you voted for Gavin Newsom and you voted for Karen Bass. You voted for them to burn down your house.

There are consequences. Learn a lesson for crying out loud. You are responsible for what has happened to your home because of your stupid decisions in the voting booth. And I'm sorry, that's harsh to say, but when I hear all these celebrities going out and talking about how their houses have burned down and woe is me and all the rest of it, all these, the average price in Pacific Palisades of a home is like $3.6 million. This is not like these are Hollywood elites.

Right. They voted for these people.

So, you know what? You're now paying the price. They burned down your home. You're paying the price. And I feel terrible for people who didn't have the power.

They're the ones holding fundraisers for Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass. You should ask for your money back to build your home back. Put it this way: as James Wood said, hours into the fire. The fire trucks pulled up to his block and they put the hose onto the hydrant and no water was there. They are telling us, they want us to believe that all the tanks, the 114 massive water tanks, were full.

They just went out of water. At that point, there was only one fire, one area. What kind of tanks are they that you're out of water within hours of a fire that you have 0% contained? And there are three $1 million, there are three $1 million tanks supplying the Pacific Palisades, and they said they were out of water. I don't believe it.

I don't believe it. Because the thing that makes this damaging is how long it's lasted. It's not how fast it's spread.

So this thing, you can't be out of water right away. These people are paying $60,000, let's say you have a $3 million home, they're paying $60,000 in taxes, maybe more, and this is what they get. They can't even get a hydrant with water in it. This this is y it's incompetent leadership. And and it's because of a smelt.

You know? Maybe it's partly because of a smell. Part of it. Part of it is there was a LA Times story that literally billions of gallons of water, of stormwater, draining into the Pacific that could be diverted into reservoirs. That's being wasted.

Billions of gallons at that. You can see where the water is draining off into the Pacific Ocean. And all that should be in reservoirs. All that should be available to fight fires. Again.

If you believe in global warming, your job is to make sure that when the fire inevitable fires come because of global warming, that you have the resources to fight them. And that you do everything you can to stop them from getting to doing by doing proper forest management and proper land management. That's your job. Your job is not to ban gas-powered cars and drive your economy into the ground trying to stop the planet from warming. Governor of California can't stop the planet from warming.

In fact, nobody can stop the planet from warming. But what you can do is mitigate the effects of it. and make sure that your citizens are protected and reduce the risk of natural disasters, and they're not doing their freaking jobs. Your job is not to be a shadow President of the United States. It's to be the governor of the state taking care of your citizens.

And by the way, the head of the firefighters, I guess the superintendent, the chief, whatever you want to call it, they were so proud of their DEI hires, the diversity in their force. That's again the death knell to a career. Rick Caruso, a Democrat, self-made billionaire, said this yesterday, cut twenty-three. You have mismanagement of resources and you don't have the right leadership making the right decisions. They clearly were not prepared.

For the kind of fire that was going to be coming. But in Los Angeles, we got warnings days ahead of time. Catastrophic winds. you have the Santa Monica Mountains that have not had any vegetation removed in decades.

So you had an enormous amount of fuel. That combination alone Should have warned everybody in the city that we've got to be over-prepared for this, and they weren't.

So the reservoirs that feed The hydrants from what I have been told. ran out very quickly. and the city was not replenishing the reservoirs for these gravity flow hydrants. It's a nightmare. But it all comes down to The right leadership.

making the right decisions. And having the right systems in place. It's frankly not that complicated. You know what? That's a competent guy.

Evidently, he sprayed all of his mini-malls or wherever he has with the fire retardant ahead of time with money that he put aside for something like this, and almost all of them are standing now. Mark, real quick, I got 30 seconds. Out of all the nominees, who's going to have the toughest time getting confirmed? Oh, gosh. I'm waiting to see RFK and Tulsi Gabbard, I think, are the toughest ones at this point.

Again, they're going to have to have good answers to some pretty tough questions about in his case about vaccines, in her case, about her foreign policy views. We'll see. He is Mark Teesson. Mark, always great to talk to you. Thanks so much.

By the way, he's got great articles on the 10 best things Biden did and the 10 worst things Biden did. Look it up in the Washington Post. Thanks, Mark. Back in a moment. Diving deep into today's top stories, it's Brian Kilmead.

The more you listen, the more you'll know it's Brian Killmead. Hey, welcome back. Got a couple of minutes here.

So, I don't mean to get political while the fires still rage in California, but. How are they even able to put out these fires until the other fire departments come? And if the fire departments come, are they going to have any water? And I was just so pretty amazed. Dennis Quaid went in last night, and he's trying to stay positive, but it's very hard.

Cut 25. This has been a problem here in California. It's just an inherent problem in California. But uh No water. No water in the palisades.

The infrastructure has been a big problem around here, and where we should spend the money. It's It's uh I do have a difference with that. Yeah. And the mayor coming back, I'm sure she got on the first plane coming back. But having nothing to say once you got here Um I don't know if that was edited like that, but uh Not a good idea.

He's trying to be diplomatic. And you don't want to blame people, but he w went out of his way to say, I got to praise the firefighters. Remember, he played a firefighter on frequency. And he when you do, you know, Dennis Quaid, especially. You emerge yourself with the culture and the job?

So, and I'm sure I'd love to talk to him too. Hopefully, we can do that. And You know, he does a lot of the first responder stuff. He does some features for Fox Nation, so he gets it.

So, what he's trying to say is, Karen Bass, and I will play this for Josh Krashauer next. When she got off the plane of Ghana, she literally stared straight ahead while a Sky News reporter asked her over and over again, what do you have to say about cutting the budget and that you weren't here when this happened? She had no answer, there was no editing. If you're interested in it, Brian's talking about it. You're with Brian Kilmead.

Isn't that interesting, Brett? Here's a man who's saying, on the one hand, despite polling, I have no idea what polling he's talking about. that suggests he could have won, actually, in the wake of that debate where he floundered so badly, his poll numbers tanked. Um and that's why the party rose up or leaders of it and and talked him out of running again and got him off the ticket. And then he turns around and says he's not you know, he's not clear that he could could have finished the term.

Well, what kind of a view is that? It this seems to me, Brett, to be to some extent the ramblings of an old man who's angry and proud and yet is finally, it seems, to some extent at least aware that he's not the man he once was.

So that was so complex, what he said to Susan Page in the USA today. The poll said I would have won. I still think I would have won, but I don't know if I would have lived. Josh Crashauer joins us now, Fox News Radio's political analyst, editor in chief of The Jewish Insider. Josh, your thoughts about what he said and what could be his final interview before leaving office?

Well, I think it really underscored, Brian, how much of a bubble this president has has been in for quite some time. He really does think that his political fortunes were were better than what they ac actually are. As we all know, like his polling numbers were in the tank and that people thought he was too old to run again. They had no trust In his ability to just serve another four years. And yet, Biden still, in his final print interview before leaving office, seems to.

Still think he could have won reelection. There are a lot of delusions, and I think that it kind of shows you how challenging it was to work for Biden during those very tumultuous times. Look, I think you could also see Um The age factor plays out in this interview. We haven't seen Biden do a whole lot of interviews. This is the one I think print interview he's done.

He's not doing, as is the tradition, an end of Presidency press conference as other presidents have. We're looking at a President that would not have been able to serve another four years. And I think that's become pretty evident, especially from reading that interview transcript.

So I looked at Brian Williams doing an interview yesterday, and he said the press really missed the boat on not being irresponsible for not chronicling the decline of Joe Biden's cognitive abilities. Really? Weren't you in the press for a while? Could Brian Williams have grabbed his iPhone and just put out a video of how he thought in 2022 of Joe Biden or when he had a show, I believe, up into the midterms?

Now Brian Williams is looking down on us. Yeah, Brian, this is as much of a media story, the fact that every almost every newspaper, you know, legacy media institution did not cover Biden's age, the fact that he wasn't up this, I mean, there was a report after, long after the November election, I think it was in the Wolster Journal, where we learned that as early as 2021, there was concern within Biden's inner circle that he had issues with his mental acuity.

So th this is a I mean, it's sort of a and and and look, it it it's it's you look at any past histories of like Woodrow Wilson or John F. Kennedy who had health issues, uh you can understand at least in a time with without the the benefit of social media and instant instant uh you know reaction on on all these platforms, uh ma ma maybe you can understand how the press dropped the ball in those eras. But in the 21st century, when everyone was talking, and everyone could see with their own very eyes, that Biden losing a little bit of acuity as the days and months went on in his presidency, and especially in that final year, and it wasn't covered the way it should have been. I mean, it's going to be a story I think a lot of historians are going to be talking about, not just about the president. And I think we will see, and I think now that.

When Biden leaves office, there will be people in that inner circle that are going to write books and speak out more candidly about what was going on. But I also think the media is going to be up for scrutiny in future years as historians look at how this major story wasn't covered the way it should have been.

Well, you did. You talked about it. You'd come on here and talk about it all the time.

So you should remove yourself from that scrutiny. I want to talk about President Trump yesterday behind closed doors. Evidently, Lindsey Graham spoke up passionately saying, I need two bills. You can't give me one bill. For example, I'm not going to vote for your tax reform if you have salt deductions in it.

I'm from South Carolina. I'm not paying for New York's high taxes. And other people said I didn't like. Donald Trump's tax reform period in the House.

So this was Trump's comments yesterday: cut 27. Then we came here, we had a meeting, but it was a really good meeting, very strong. And we'll get something done. One bill, two bills, doesn't matter to me. They're going to work that out.

But the end result is going to be the same. Y your what are your sources telling you happened?

Well Number one, I I don't think Trump really has gotten in the weeds of of the Process. I mean, at first, he seemed to indicate he supported the Mike Johnson, the House Speaker's plan for one big, beautiful bill. That was what he said earlier in this month.

Now, I think he's understanding that I think the political dynamics are more favorable to kind of breaking it up into two pieces, two reconciliation bills. I think that makes a lot more sense politically. You kind of hinted at all the issues that could come up in the extending the Trump tax cuts. Yes, that's pretty unifying among Republicans, both in the House and the Senate. But there are, when it comes to cutting spending and making sure you trim spending to make sure we don't add to the debt, there's going to be divisions in the Republican Party.

It's not going to be easy to paper over. And I think it's a lot easier to get the easier stuff on immigration, energy deregulation, some more politically palatable things that are unifying and less divisive in the first package. I kind of think of it like a sports team, winning begets winning, getting momentum begets momentum. Getting an easier package through having a victory to cheer about, and then focusing on the, I think the tax. Tax cut extensions, tax reform, that's going to be a little more tricky.

I think it still is generally passable, but it's going to be tricky, especially with that narrow majority in the House.

Now Mike Johnson he prefers the one bill approach. The speaker, I think he has sort of a too big to fail mentality where you want to get everything in the one bill because it you would you would really, really blow things up for Trump if it doesn't pass. But look, I I Recently, a lot of these two big fail legislations have not passed and have had a lot of issues.

So, I think there's a little bit of PTSD in the House, given that narrow majority Mike Johnson has. But I do think the Senate approach is with what I understand, the Senate Republicans, Lindsey Graham among them, they're getting more momentum for the two-bill approach. And I think that's probably the more likely outcome. All right, Josh Trash Hawaii, our guest.

So, Josh, let's talk about the nominations.

Next week, we have a schedule. On the 14th, it'll be Doug Collins, VA, Pete Hagseth, Defense, Doug Bergham, Interior. On the next day, it'll be Noam, Duffy, Marco, Radcliffe, Chris Wright, and Russ Vogt as OMB director.

So. Because all these names are out there and some are considered controversial, Elizabeth Warren thinks that Donald Trump is playing some three-dimensional chess with his talk of Greenland and Canada. CUP 31. Why is Donald Trump doing this? 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.

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.

So, that we don't spend more time on Robert Kennedy's views on vaccines. 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.

So, do you think that Donald Trump says, let's bring up the Greenland scam?

So I don't talk about Pete Hakesaft. I mean, they also talked about President Trump doesn't want to talk about tax cuts that he wants to work out. That's why he's bringing up Panama and Greenland and Canada. What are your thoughts? Is Donald Trump playing three dimensional chess?

Yeah, I look, I actually think the there there is something to be said that you're not seeing coverage about any of the nominees, and you are there a whole lot of other issues that are kind of front and center, and that probably does play to the nominees' benefit. I don't think that that's intentional. I also don't think we're going to be talking much about Greenland and Panama once Trump's presidency begins. I do think that it is sort of kind of water cooler fodder more than a real focus of what his foreign policy is going to look like. But yeah, I mean, look, I actually think it reflects the fact that a lot of these nominees do have some momentum.

I think Gabbard and RFK Jr. would be the trickiest to get get confirmed. I would put those two at the top of the list, especially Gabbard. I think Pete Hexeth, he survived the gauntlet in December. I think they threw everything at him before even the confirmation was going to be held, hoping to derail that, and it didn't work.

And I think he's going to do well in the hearing. He's very good parrying these types of questions from senators.

So I think he's got the most momentum of all the nominees that have been seen as a little challenging. But yeah, I do think that the prospects for all generally for the Trump nominees to get through, and this is going to be a bam, bam, bam. You know, one day you get a whole, you know, you get, you got, you have numerous nominees dealing with their confirmations, and a lot of them are going to be held in that two-day period. There's potential for a lot of momentum to get these nominees confirmed, to get the administration ready to go on January 20th. Yeah, I think I haven't heard any people say that they're going to put up a big roadblock, but I have seen, according to Axios, that Chuck Schumer said, create some fireworks.

We need to, the word is, Republicans spend four years. Attacking Democrats brand, and we need to use the hearings to begin returning the favor. He reminded Senators they have an opportunity to seize the narrative, and they look for Tammy Duckworth to go after Pete. They look for Andy Kim to go after RFK, Adam Schiff to make hay with Pam Bondi. Good luck with that.

Your thoughts about that? I mean, is this going to be some scripted fireworks and passion plays? Uh good luck with that. Uh look I I you need to have the senators that can kind of pull off the I mean though those th those traders. And a lot of the more effective, there's just not a lot of kind of those types of rhetorical.

I mean, look, I don't think Adam Schiff or Andy, I think Andy Kim could be a very, very talented senator, but he's not the kind of person who's going to have that made-for-TV moment in these hearings.

So I would be more skeptical of that. I also think Chuck Schumer, he's already playing defense in the beginning of the year with the new Senate. There were Republican-led bills first on Lake and Riley, which is likely to pass with a lot of Democrats actually joining the Republicans. Schumer blocked, you know, that was something Schumer opposes, and he's not able to get a lot of his own members to join him, especially the moderates and the Red State Democrats.

So that's a big loss for Schumer early on in this new Congress. And there's a new bill that's going to be up before the Senate next week, likely, about sanctioning the International Criminal Court, which is something that Schumer held up. In the last year, and a lot of Democrats want to vote for that as well, or at least some, maybe not a lot, but at least, you know, maybe eight or 10.

So, I mean, Schumer is talking a big game. In reality, he has momentum. He has a mandate that is reflective in a lot of these senators on the Democratic side winning states that Trump carried. And I think Schumer talks a big game, but I actually think most of these nominees are going to sail through and may even get a decent number of Democrats supporting them. I think so too.

I think it's going to be interesting to get some quick verdicts. And I think we just, for now on, Republican, Democrat years from now, whoever the nominee is, whoever the president is, whatever the party, it's got to be done quickly. The delay a game that forces these nominees to give up their careers, put a hold on their families, and go through the nomination process, then wait for a vote because people want to delay it. While this is fundamentally service, I think it's unnecessary strain and stress. Hopefully that this will be the beginning of turning the page on that.

Hopefully we'll talk next week and we'll get some people that testify and get a quick vote. Josh, thanks so much. Have a great night. Thanks, Brian. All right.

When we come back, your turn. 1-866-408-7669. Get on board. I'll try to get through as many calls as possible. I have about six or seven minutes.

Also, kind of cool, a bit of a surprise at Jimmy Carter's funeral just now. I'll review it when we come back. Expanding your knowledge base. It's the Brian Kill Meet Show. Radio that makes you think.

This is the Brian Kill Me Show. You and Emily were working diligently on the outnumbered couch to get Jonathan Hunt's number because you knew that I was so worried because there were so many things that I had left behind, and I was wracked with guilt. I realized that there were thousands of people in the exact same situation that I was in. I got Jonathan's number. He was in the Palisades, he was a couple blocks from my home.

And he went over and he took a picture to let me know so far things are okay. And I asked him, Is there any way you can go inside and get my grandmother's cross? And you know, there are baby pictures that I can't replicate. There aren't digital copies of them anywhere. And artwork that my girls made when they were in preschool.

And he did. He and his producer, Nikki, they went in and they got those things: my grandfather's sword from World War I, and you know, the crosses that, the cross that my grandmother gave me when she passed away, and the two. Crosses that my daughters wear when we go to church. And I was so sad that I had left those things behind and didn't think to put them in the go box. And he went in and took about 90 seconds with his producer.

They knew where to go. They got them. They went back to their reporting and they made my family and my heart whole. And I will never ever be able to thank them enough for that. Can we see the photo?

I know we have a photo of Nikki. That was Lotus the day she was born. And she was only a couple hours old. and she was smiling in that picture. That is something that is irreplaceable.

There's no other copy of that that exists. And the fact that they grabbed that for me, I can't tell you what that means. Yeah, Kennedy keeps a house out in the West Coast. She was out there during her earlier days in TV and radio, and she was just talking on the bottom line yesterday, and that's what a lot of people are doing. In fact, my friend that lost everything, it's been on our show before, came out and said that, you know, the TV truck brought him to his house, and he got to his house.

There was absolutely nothing left. There was zero left. Um so and the whole block was gone.

So that's a whole thing. That is huge to do. That's a great favor. And it's interesting with all this valuable stuff she has. That's the stuff you can't replace.

I mean, the earlier, if this happened in the 90s or 80s, there was almost nothing like a digital copy of anything.

So if you lost it, you lost it, unless you got doubles or you had the negative, I know, which might be something nobody really remembers what a negative is. Steve, you're in New York. Hey, Steve. Hey Brian, how you doing today? Good, what's on your mind?

I just wanted to pose a question to you with regards to. Biden on his uh last days. Um What are your thoughts on his giving himself a part in before the inauguration? I never even thought about that. But, you know, there's no doubt about it.

I'm reading some excerpts from James Comer's book. This guy was uh made like thirty million dollars. Uh at minimum. And none of this stuff is above board. One of the quotes from Comer's book, and I'll paraphrase it, was: there is not any above-board way in which the Bidens made money.

Maybe he got a speech or something where he got $50,000 to do that as a former vice president. But besides that, most of the stuff they were doing was all diabolical.

So maybe he does. He's already talking about doing it with Fauci and with Liz Cheney.

So, with Fauci, I mean, that would be really interesting.

So, what is Fauci trying to hide? If I'm Fauci, I'm saying no, thank you. I don't need it because you told everyone you are science, and everything you did was correct and above board.

So himself a preemptive pardon? I think that would be terrible, terrible for his legacy. To a degree, that's why Trump, because that ridiculous. Criminal trial, which I think helped Donald Trump get the Republican nomination. He's supposed to have a sentence Friday.

Supposed to be sentence Friday. Everyone says, you know, what's the big deal? You get sentence, and then you go on the pathway to getting an appeal. But until you get sentenced, you can't start your appeal.

So just take the sentence. But he doesn't want it. Because Trump Like all of us, if you were president, doesn't want to be the first convicted felon to be president of the United States, especially in a sham trial like that whole one that was concocted off the ridiculous statements on Michael Cohen, a disgraced lawyer that can't get hired. Tom Arnold doesn't even return his calls. David, you're listening on the Fox News Radio app.

Hey, David. Hey, big fan. Heart goes out to everyone in LA, by the way. I wanted to talk to you about the wildfires. I wanted to know your take on two things.

First, Are you aware of any international cooperation in manpower or supplying goods? or services of any kind, which I think the United States deserves, And second, Um How the mayor is wasting money and the governor is wasting money. How about that they spent $30 million at the University of California to help pro-Palestinian terrorists terrify Jewish students? Absolutely.

Listen, David, you're scratching the surface, and you're also talking about the fact that I'm pro, I think Ukraine needs to be backed. But a lot of the Los Angeles firefighting equipment went to Ukraine. I think that's what you're referring to, and where's the reciprocal help, not from Ukraine, but from other nations. But right now, we just need things from Washington and people on the ground. Every minute matters.

From high atop Fox News headquarters in New York City, always seeking solutions, never sowing division. It's Brian Kelmead. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the latest moments of the show. Today, big day.

Karen Bass is finally going to speak to the disgraced mayor of Los Angeles. We have speaking about the indicted mayor of New York City. He's going to give a state of the city address. Jimmy Carter's ongoing funeral is there. It's always historic to see all the presidents in one place.

Also, noteworthy, Barack Obama and Donald Trump are talking more than any two people, I think, in church.

So I don't know what they're going over, but knowing President Trump will eventually find out. This hour, Adam Carolla will call us from Los Angeles. Last night, he did not know if his house survived the fires. I hope it has. He'll be with us shortly.

Holman Jacobs Jr. of the Wall Street Journal standing by. But first, let's get to the big three.

Now, with the stories you need to know, it's Brian's big three. Number three. Here's a man who's saying, on the one hand, despite polling, I have no idea what polling he's talking about, that suggests he could have won, and then he turns around and says he's not clear that he could have finished the term.

Well, what kind of a view is that? I don't know, Britt. Neither does he. Biden reflects, and his thoughts and beliefs are as muddled as his presidency. How do you think he'll be remembered?

Weigh in. Number two. Then we came here, we had a meeting, but it was a really good meeting, very strong. And we'll get something done. One bill, two bills, doesn't matter to me.

They're going to work that out. But the end result is going to be the same. Let's hope Trump plots and plans with his Republicans on Capitol Hill as his agenda takes shape, but tactics are still being debated. While signs of Democratic cooperation, you heard me-show promise. Number So what we are seeing is the result of eight months of negligible rain and winds that have not been seen in LA in at least 14 years.

It's a deadly combination. Right. Like last year with record rainfall, there was no way to capture it. And negligible is an interesting way of saying negligible. Worst fires in our nation's history, perhaps.

And the most unprepared state in the country is dealing with it. Yes, I'm talking California. When you run out of water, hours into an epic blaze, you have failed your citizens from billionaire celebrities to working-class families all agree their lives and lifestyle for the foreseeable future has been destroyed.

Now, there's going to be altered, but it didn't have to be this bad. Oman Jenkins joins us now. Holman, welcome back to the Brian Kilmeat Show. Great to be with you, Brian. Homan, just your reflex reactions to what's happening in California.

I mean, we're still trying to get any one of the five fires under control, but what are your thoughts? Can you put in perspective? A horrible, you know? I have friends who live there too, who live in the hills north and west of the city. Almost everybody who lives in that area now is at risk and being asked to evacuate.

It's really quite terrible. And it is that collision of factors, but the shortage of water isn't helping. The poor planning isn't helping. But this is the thing that California has always faced this, and you have to be ready for it. You've got to be ready for these things because they're going to happen.

I got 114 water tanks just for a Pacific Palisades area. And by the time they got there a few hours in, they said there was no water. And it was witnessed by people as the firefighters finally pulled up. I'm not sure what they could have saved, but it would have been great to be able to try.

So, Homan, I was just struck by the ongoing debate on electric cars and the insincerity in which it's approached. To save the world, we needed to drive an EV, unless we were going to be selfish and get a gas-powered Hummer. What did you discover, and what have you observed as you wrote in the Wall Street Journal about this sincerity of the EV mandate?

Well, it began with a mistaken economic concept from the beginning. Alternative energy is not replacement energy. If you subsidize people to consume green energy, they will, but also keep consuming fossil energy too, and their total energy budget will go up because people will consume as much energy as it makes sense to at the given price.

So if you subsidize energy consumption, green or otherwise, you're just going to get more energy consumption artificially. And they knew that. They knew that from the eighteen fifties when coal arrived on the scene. Wood and wind power and water power didn't disappear. They just all of them grew together so people could consume more energy and do more of what they wanted to more efficiently.

So, you come up with a Tesla car and you're coming up here. We've got to get more mandates. They're not going to sell cast power cars in 2030, I think, in California. But that comes to the Chinese. The Chinese put together a car that is more efficient, that there's more of them.

They're looking to sell them. But all of a sudden, in America, even though the planet's heating up at one degree every hundred years, we're not in a rush to get the Chinese EVs. Why?

Well, you know, that's the immediate problem. We have mandates that force the US and European car makers to sell EVs at a loss. They're losing 10, 20, even $50,000 per car.

Now you have the Chinese coming in saying, we can give you a better car cheaper, which means that that $20,000 loss can be a $40,000 loss. And that's all that's going on. The U.S. is keeping the Chinese out altogether simply so this whole. Just crazy Rube Goldberg situation with our auto industry and EV mandates doesn't melt down completely.

But again, it's having no effect on climate change or the amount of CO two going into the atmosphere. And this is not to say EVs are bad. You know, they're wonderful gadgets, and if you just left the market alone, people would find their way to them because they, you know, they're useful cars for certain people. Right. It it makes sense.

But when you can't build an infrastructure to surround it, that's also a problem too. I think you've built eight terminals, they say, since the infrastructure bill was jammed down our throats. And you also point out in Europe that they they Volkswagen is panicking. Yes.

Volkswagen is losing lots of money on its E Vs. And now the Chinese are creeping not into the only into the European market, but in all the global markets where Germany is trying to sell these money losing E Vs.

So now for the first the Volkswagen for decades exported all its layoffs. It closed off its You know, factories in old Czechoslovakia or Poland before they did any in Germany.

Now they're talking about actual factory closures for the first time ever in Germany, which has people really worked up.

So your point is, if uh If this was really a global crisis where the world was going to end, we wouldn't be worrying about who was making the cars. But you also point out that why China is doing this. They don't have oil and gas.

So they would benefit from the electric car. They got the rare earth to make the batteries, right? Yeah. Now the China the Chinese are are are massively subsidizing their consumers and banning uh uh gas powered cars because they want to switch from imported oil to domestic coal. Because the US Navy has a chokehold on the oil that keeps the Chinese economy uh Going.

So, if you're going to have a showdown over Taiwan in the future, you want to be insulated from the power of the U.S., maybe to cut off your energy supply.

So, China is burning a lot more coal to run its EBs. This is not a climate policy. This is a national security policy for them. I want you to hear what President Trump said on this: cut number two. I don't know what it is with electric.

This guy loves electric. We're going to be ending the electric car mandate quickly, by the way. This guy loves electric. And he we don't have enough electricity and then we have AI where we need more and he wants to get he wants everybody to have an electric heater instead of a gas heater.

So you pointed out that we got to build more power plants because of the energy of AI and because of the car. And he doesn't realize that also works against global warming if it in fact exists. Yeah. No, I mean, a lot of our electricity is going to be generated by coal and gas, which creates CO two emissions. And China's putting up coal plants faster than anybody.

We have flattened our emissions because we've switched from coal to natural gas, which has less emissions. But we've also reduced our emissions by shifting a lot of heavy industry to China.

So if the emissions continue, we just don't get the benefit of them. The world does not have a policy for dealing with climate change. We should just stop kidding ourselves about this.

So it's going to have to live with climate change. And that's just a fact of life. And so California is going to have to learn to deal with fires and things like that. And we're going to have to try and protect our jobs instead of exporting them in pursuit of phony climate policy that doesn't actually affect climate. That would help.

And by the way, do you see them backing off these mandates already? No gas power cars in New York and California, and who else is going to follow suit? Do you think they would be able to really hold this? No, Americans vote, so they're not going to let politicians stick around who actually seriously ban gasoline-powered cars. But you know, GM and Ford and Chrysler and Dodge are now so.

Dependent on government subsidies to maintain the EV businesses they were forced to build, that there are still going to be some kind of mandates or subsidies to keep people buying EVs just to keep these companies from crashing. But no, you're going to see a lot of EVs on the road, you're going to see a lot of gas-powered cars on the road, you're probably going to see more cars on the road overall. I want to see what you think of Mark Murano, who's a long-time critic of global warming and climate change. CUP 44. From the Department of Transportation to the Department of Energy to the Pentagon.

In fact, Biden made every climate agency a climate agency. My fantasy was to have the shortest-lived job in federal history. Go in for about two weeks, shorter than some Trump's previous press secretaries, but we won't get into that. But go in and literally defund and close all of the woke climate programs, particularly starting in places like the Navy or in the Pentagon, Department of Army, where they actually have all these climate initiatives and they actually have the mission of the Army and the Navy as one of their focuses is going after fighting climate change, which, by the way, isn't a thing. There's no such thing as f climate action or fighting climate change.

So, I mean, we have room for electric tanks, solar-powered vehicles. It's ridiculous. It's green virtue signaling because even if we do have a climate change problem, none of these policies are influencing it. They are simply very expensive boondoggles to signal climate virtue to a certain class of voter. We're not going to fix anything.

In the twenty five years since I've been writing about this, China went from half of U. S. emissions to twice U. S. and European emissions combined.

The amount of CO two going into the atmosphere is utterly unaffected by any climate policy ever, and that's the foreseeable future. I just want you to hear what they claim. The press secretary, now key advisor to Joe Biden as he stays president for another week. The last one. You've heard me and others talk about this.

That's Bionomics. Bionomics is working and is in action. And because of this president's policies, you have these seven major automakers coming together to install, I think, 30,000 high-powered EV charging stations. And that's progress. That's going to help middle-class families.

We haven't seen it. It's not helping middle-class families. I can't tell you how many anecdotal stories I have. People that get scared to death when they pull up to a charging station and the car is almost out and they see it's the wrong match to their car or it's out, out. Yeah.

No, it's ridiculous. I mean, China is scrapping EVs by the hundreds of thousands because it mandated that people build them and then they were out-motored or just not interesting to consumers. And so they scrapped them by the hundreds of thousands. We're going to be scrapping these chargers by the hundreds of thousands if they ever work because there aren't going to be enough people to use them and it doesn't make sense anyway. You cannot switch the national auto fleet to electric chargers.

You know, there's eight pumps at the average gas station, the driver is there for five minutes. You know, multiply that by an hour and a half to charge a car. And it would take the, you know, the territory of Nebraska to fit all the chargers we'd need just to keep America on the road.

So it doesn't make sense. It never did. And they want to do it with trucks. You see, the stories about the batteries are so big in trucks, they can't carry as much cargo.

Sooner or later, if Gavin Newsom or people like him become remained governor of California, they don't want to let gas-powered trucks deliver cargo. These people are going to starve to death. the amount of coal that's being burned to generate electricity so giant EVs can carry around their giant EV batteries can contributing nothing on net to the climate change problem. It's just ridiculous what we've been doing in this country, but it's all for show. And where do you think it's going?

I mean, we got the Inflation Reduction Act, which is all green energy. We got a new president coming in who wants nothing to do with it. We do have electric cars out there. Tesla is run by Elon Musk, a for-profit company that was benefiting from the subsidies. But I know how hard he worked to bring that to the market, to make it successful.

So, your thoughts about where we're going to be in two and three years with this? Tesla could be successful. Tesla would be more successful if its competitors were not being subsidized to build E Vs that lose money that they would never build unless the government mandated them. The Tesla would have the market to itself. It would be like the Sony Walkman of E Vs.

Everybody would who wants an electric car would buy a Tesla and they'd pay for the nose through the nose for it and Elon would be as rich as he is now, but we wouldn't be wasting all this public money on all this other EV nonsense. EVs are still going to be part of the market and a growing part of the market, I think, because they have real attractions to people. Right, Holman Jenkins, our guests, my last thing to you, Homan, is There's this device out there, I don't know how to describe it, but it was featured on 60 Minutes. It was written about two weeks ago in the New York Times. That is essentially a vacuum from the sky to take carbon out of our atmosphere.

It is ingenious. There's a lot of rich people have an emergency meeting from Jeff Bezos on down and Bill Gates on how to bring this to the market and make it work. And I'd be excited about this, especially if I was a climate activist. But evidently, there's a lot of people like Al Gore not happy about it. And my sense is because if we take the carbon out of the sky, what happens to all of their green innovations that are supposed to be jammed down our throats in Western society?

Yeah. Also mean we could still burn oil and coal. And Al Gore's whole business model is vilifying oil companies and coal companies.

So we could have oil and coal without climate change if you took the carbon out of the atmosphere.

So that's why they're opposed to that. They're also opposed to geoengineering, which would block like one percent of the sunlight coming to the earth and then fix the warming problem that way. They want the root canal approach to ending the pleasures of industrial civilization. Homan Jenkins Jr., thanks so much. Appreciate your column and the perspective we're at right now.

And all these CEOs of major car companies stand up, speak out, and tell everybody you're a for-profit company that has to answer to shareholders. You can't be an organ of the government. Show some guts. Thanks so much, Homan. You bet.

Back in a moment. Coming to you on a need-to-know basis because Mandy, you need to know. It's Brian Kilmead. Breaking news, unique opinions. Hear it all on the Brian Kill Me Show.

I'm going to talk about my white privilege so badly. I could not find a job. I walked to a fire station in North Hollywood. I was 19. I was living in the garage of my family home.

My mom was on welfare and food stamps. And I said, can I get a job as a fireman? And they said, no, because you're not black, Hispanic, or a woman. We'll see in about seven years.

So Adam Carolla talking about that, and he also said That a woman was online, and they said, When did you apply for to be a firefighter? And they said, Three weeks ago. And the woman got a call right away to be on the fire fight uh fire force. And that was Adam Crulla testifying in front of Congress. Adam Crowla is going to be on in about five minutes with us and tell us.

I hope his when he was on last night, He could not say, did not know whether his house had survived or not. But it just shows the folly of white privilege. He grew up extremely poor, single-parent family. Eventually, his parents were divorced. He was a contractor for seven years, then worked his way into radio and TV and became this huge star commentator, one of the first successful podcasters.

But he also did a thing called catch a contractor because he was able to use his skills building houses in order. to uh you know and catch contractors who weren't as upstanding as he was. When he was actually doing it, we just see we're seeing a press conference now led by Mayor Bass. And about easily 35 people on stage. Why do we need 35 people on stage?

You're in the middle of a historic epic fire. You got to tell me you can't be better used on the streets, if nothing else, handing out water to firefighters who are under f underpaid, understaffed? Uh under equipped. And now we know their budget was cut for $17 million. I don't think they ever recover from this.

And I think this guy, Caruso, I know very little about California politics anymore, although I lived out there. And they had a Republican governor, actually, Wilson.

So I know very little about their politics on a day-to-day basis, but I know Mayor Bass was a finalist to be vice president. When you looked at her background, she had nothing except for being a minority. And Joe Biden had said, I have to hire a minority and a woman.

So it knocked his leading candidates down to maybe three. And she was one of them. Val Demings was the other. And she was. Absolutely a non inconsequential congresswoman who loved Castro, constantly going to Cuba.

So with that whole re that whole allegiance to communism, not really sure that would have flew. Been a big benefit.

So now we watch her just crumble. Be ill-prepared and crumble with in front of the spotlight. Please wake up. How many more things do you have to lose? Your money, your freedom?

And of course your ability to choose what car you drive. Didn't they show you enough during the coronavirus? The fastest three hours in radio. You're with Brian Kilmead. We are back.

Welcome back, everybody. We're watching what's happening at the LA fires. A totally uninspiring press conference is taking place now where 35 people say. Basically, look out for dogs and cats. And if they tell you to evacuate, evacuate.

They have 0% control of the fires, five in all. And it's just amazing how much ineptness we're witnessing and how lack of preparation is making everything so much worse. I don't have to explain it to Adam Carolla. He is living it. He chose to live out there, born out there.

And we're a successful podcast. The Adam Carolla Radio Show is. He's a comedian who's got a great special out, but we'll talk about that in a moment. First off, Adam, do you still have a house? I'm not sure.

I was evacuated from Malibu. where I live on Tuesday night. Early evening, about six o'clock, there was mandatory evacuation. I took off and went to uh my studio and which is in another part of town. And And it just kept watching the news, kept talking to neighbors, kept talking to friends, and we got some drips and drabs of information.

I do know that most of the structures around my condo have burned down. Including everything in front of me on PCH all along the water. I mean, we're really talking about. houses on the low end That are $12, $14 million, and on the high end, they're $70 million, and they're all gone. All of them, all but me.

So everything around me is gone. But I have heard that a few structures, including my condo, may still be intact. Miraculously, you just can't you can't go there and confirm it because they won't let you in. I mean, it's amazing what's going on, and it's amazing how, out of all the things you could think could go wrong, I never thought running out of water was something that was going to happen, but it seems to have happened. Rick Caruso, who was running for mayor, self-made multi-billionaire, I think, he said this: cut 23.

you have mismanagement of resources and you don't have the right leadership making the right decisions. They clearly were not prepared. For the kind of Fire that was going to be coming. But in Los Angeles, we got warnings days ahead of time. Catastrophic winds.

you have the Santa Monica Mountains that have not had any vegetation removed in decades.

So you had an enormous amount of fuel. That combination alone Should have warned everybody in the city that we've got to be overprepared for this, and they weren't.

So the reservoirs that feed The hydrants from what I have been told. ran out very quickly. and the city was not replenishing the reservoirs for these gravity flow hydrants. It's a nightmare. But it all comes down to The right leadership.

making the right decisions. and having the right systems in place. It's frankly not that complicated. Your thoughts, Adam?

Well, yeah, I mean, we don't do any of that in California. We're fixated on having the first, you know, lesbian or the first black or the first. Gay lesbian black who's running the fire department or the city council. I mean, we're all, you know, here's what we do. It's like every city.

who announces their sanctuary city. They announce their sanctuary city, and then what? Nothing. And then somebody gets dropped off and they go, what do we do with these people? We don't have the resources for this.

It's the exact same mindset. We just talk about this stuff like everyone. deserves a seat at the table. hand that no child should go to bed hungry and everyone and then we do nothing. It's all just talk.

It's that's that's how we do it. in Los Angeles. And then when something happens, We don't know what to do. And then at some point, we'll announce it's unacceptable after it's done. We just go, it's unacceptable.

And that's how we roll because we're incompetent, but we basically run on good vibes, and good vibes are great. Until the S goes down, and then we got nothing. Adam Kroll, our guest. Adam, this was you talking about this problem in 2022 on another network. I want to talk about my white privilege so badly.

I could not find a job. I walked to a fire station in North Hollywood. I was 19. I was living in the garage of my family home. My mom was on welfare and food stamps.

And I said, can I get a job as a fireman? And they said, no, because you're not black, Hispanic, or a woman. We'll see in about seven years.

So that was you in 2017, my bad, testifying.

So you call this, and that's what this fire chief was bragging about. His fire chief is saying, Hey, I'm a lesbian, and I heard a lot of diversity. You're going to love my diverse firefighters. I know it's like, well, when are you going to be diverse enough? And they're like, never.

But in that class, flip continues. And The part of it that comes in about twenty-five seconds is I took the test to be an LA County fireman. I went and took the written test because I signed up for it. And seven years later, they notified me that my test aid it come up. And I just went and took it, even though I was a carpenter by then.

I went and took it just because I was like, well I signed up for this test. Seven years ago, which by the way, when you're 19 is a long time between 19 and 26, right? That's a lifetime.

So I went and took it on a Saturday at Hollywood High. And I was standing in line, and I couldn't believe that I signed up to take a written test to be a firefighter, and seven years later. They notified me.

So I kept asking everyone around me, when did you sign up? I turn to a woman behind me. She was a woman of color who was five foot nothing and about one hundred and five pounds. And I looked at her and I said, When did you sign up to take this test? And she said, Wednesday.

What? Yeah. So Who would you want coming to save you? Adam Carolla with his strapping 26-year-old boxer carpenter, or a five-foot person who, on a whim, probably decided I'll sign my name here. She looked like Paula Abdul's younger sister, and she didn't look like she could rescue a box of Legos out of a burning house, much less, you know, someone.

Uh full grown. Human.

So, having said all that, these people, Adam Sandler, we're hearing about Billy Crystal. We know about Jennifer Adamson lives up there. It's hard to imagine anybody's house surviving. And if yours is, it's lucky you're going to have nothing around you, no infrastructure. Adam, this must be really tough on you, especially because you've grown up there, you've been there forever, you know everybody.

And almost all of them are literally in the line of fire.

Now the Hollywood Hills are burning. I have a dear friend. A very good friend who I spoke to yesterday who I know Has a house down on PCH, down on the ocean, and he has another home. up the hill. And he loves them, and he spends time there, and he's just trying to convince me to get another place up the hill.

I talked to him yesterday. I said, How's it going? He said, We lost both houses.

So there's nothing. There's nothing there anymore. And yes, if my... home makes it. I don't know whether I'm returning to Rubble essentially.

I'm just going to watch bulldozers for the next two years just push people's stuff. Up and down PCH. There's literally. Nothing in front of me. I used to look out my front window and see multi-million-dollar homes with the ocean beyond.

There's nothing they're not there anymore. Yeah, it's going to be amazing, too. I hear it's very hard to get a hotel room. Very hard to find a place to go. Are you realizing that now?

Are you talking to people that are scrambling? You know, I'm glad you brought that up. I have a show tonight in Vegas, so I just left for Vegas. A day or two early. But I do want to make this point.

I'm glad you brought it up, which is. These fires are started by homeless people. Oftentimes, and/or fallen power lines because we have a decrepit infrastructure for power. And that's another problem that we've never addressed. We're supposed to bury the power lines in the ground, but we don't do it.

And so we don't have water, we don't have power. Homelessness. All of these people. In Malibu, all these people in um Santa Monica, all the people in the Palisades, all these people now, Pasadena. I mean, there's people.

who are literally homeless because their homes were burnt to the ground. None of them are sleeping. In a cardboard box under an overpass tonight because they're not. They're homeless. but they're not junkies and they're not mental patients.

Those who are, those comprise the homeless in Los Angeles. We say, oh, the unhoused community. They're not unhoused, they're drug addicts. who have mental problems. I am homeless.

Everyone in Malibu is homeless. No one's sleeping on the street because we have A a support system. We're responsible. We have. I had Dr.

Drew reach out to me. I had Jimmy Kimmel reach out to me. I've had a ton of people reach out to me and go, Would you like to stay at my home? Because I'm not a Schizophrenic drug addict who's ripped them off, who's sleeping in the street.

So, this whole thing of like homeless, everyone in Mal was homeless. Nobody slept outdoors one day. Right. Does anyone really think about what that means? And for the record, it's not because you were born into money.

It's not because people were born into money. It's whether you're looking to. Put up with the info, have the infrastructure available in your life. And James Woods talked about it last night. Neighbors.

Doesn't matter how famous or not famous you are. Neighbors helping out. The guy with Alzheimer's, 96 years old, who doesn't know his faust is burning. A neighbor pulled him out. I don't know if they were famous or not.

So people helping people is helping. And I think I told you this. In 92, I lived in Malibu, Los Flores Canyon Drive, when the sea lion was there, and all my stuff burnt. But I was a single guy just renting a small room in a beautiful place. And I remember the chaos that surrounded it, but I also remembered Gold's Gym said free membership for three months.

Gap said you can go get two pairs of jeans for every three, and I had no money. And I remember the Oakwood Apartments said you could stay here for a few weeks, and they were fully furnished. There was a sense of community in Los Angeles, which is made up of very driven mercenaries in many respects who can make their way through a very tough industry. And I'm seeing that again. Yeah, yeah no, people.

People step up. People do the right thing. People are generally decent. And I, like I said, as soon as everyone found out about the fire, all I had was people reach out to me asking if I needed a place to stay. And that's how.

That's how people are. But if you're schizophrenic and a drug addict, then no, we can't have you in our home around our kids. and our jewelry. And the other thing is over billions of dollars every year, billions of dollars every year for the homeless budget and eight hundred nineteen million for the whole firefighter budget to create sixty five percent of the homeless budget, and it's was cut back $17 million last year by this genius mayor who wanted to do $23 million, and suddenly someone got into it and said, just $17 will be enough. Adam, on a much lighter note, you're an important part of Fox Nation's first ever night of comedy.

I was there. It's awesome. You were great. Fox Nation's first ever. It's you, Jim Brewer, Anthony Rodilla, as well as Jimmy Phaler, who's genius.

He was the MC there.

So check it out beginning today. On the ninth. Today's the ninth, right?

So today you can get it on Fox Nation, the world's favorite app. Adam, I know it's not the perfect time, but it is out there for people that want to break.

Well, yeah, I mean, listen, you turn on the news, and if it's not something going down in Ukraine, it's something going down in Israel, and if it's not that, Of all places, it's going down in Malibu, California. You know, like you can expect to hear news about Ukraine and. News about Gaza and get depressed, but Malibu.

So if it's depressing, every time you turn on the TV set now, maybe go over to Fox Nation and have a laugh. Absolutely.

And by the way, that's at my college. Long Island University is where you did it. And I know, in some level, it was an homage to me. I'm going to try to, I'm going to sell myself on that. It was.

All right. Adam, thanks so much. Hang in there and let us know what happens with your condo. Adam Caroa, thank you. Yeah, and of course, check out his podcast all the time.

You get to get it everywhere. Back in a moment. Educating, entertaining, enlightening. You're with Brian Kilmead. Wow.

The talk show that's getting you talking. You're with Brian Kilmead. One can't even respond to it. I mean, it's uh. Yeah, people are literally Fling.

People have lost their lives. Kids. Uh lost their schools. families completely torn asunder, churches burned down. This guy wanted to politicize it.

I have a lot of thoughts, and I know what I want to say. I won't. I stood next to a president of the United States of America today, and I was proud to be with Joe Biden. And he had the backs of every single person in this community. He didn't play politics, didn't try to divide any of us.

How did he do that? Did he combine with you with that little worder, the water redirection that he put together and nullify what Trump did up leading up to 2020? Trump wanted to get water flowing down from Northern California to Southern California, but they said environmental issues, including some ridiculous fish, was a problem.

So they decided in 2020 to do it your way. 113-year-old aqueduct would be the way that the area got water, and it worked so well, despite evidently having a number of tanks, water tanks, that they said were immediately. Empty. They said there were 114 massive water tanks, 31 million. gallon tanks just for Pacific Palisades and they were Empty almost from the first hours of the fire.

And Trump is frustrated, and he let him know it. And he blasted him, and he's not trying to be politically correct. And he's had it. And for the governor just to say and by the way, when asked, the governor, when asked about why Pacific Palisades by Anderson Cooper ran out of water, he said, well, that's a local issue. Do you have any checks and balances in that state of yours?

You spend most of your time with Hollywood stars in Southern California. Do you think you want to go to the Pacific Palisades and say, give me a check and balance here? Show me what you're doing with the water system. You know, this is wildfire country. You know, this is wildfire season.

You know, the Santa Ana wins. And did he ever think to do that?

Now, environmentally obsessed is this guy. Here's Trump. Letting everybody know where he stood, cut three. Take care of the floors. You know, the floors of the forests.

Very important. You look at other countries where they do it differently and and it's a whole different story. I was with the President of Finland and he said we have Much different. We're a forest nation. He called it a forest nation.

And they spend a lot of time on raking and cleaning. The head of Austria tells me, you know, we have Trees that are much more flammable than what you have in California. We never have forest floors because they maintain their forests. And you have all that water that could be used to As water, what they call water flow, where the war water, you know, where the land would be damp. And you'd stop many of these horrible fires.

They had a couple of horrible forest fires in California, and I went, I said, you know, you had a lot of trees standing. Yes, they were healthy trees there. I said, with this intense heat, you could see they were charred a little bit on the bottom, but they were going to be all right. But when they fall, they're like, you know, it's like lighting a match. And he brought up different times of water.

And he just said, this guy just wants to do it his way, and now look. Hey, I want to see you in person February 15th at the Florida Theater in Jacksonville, Florida, BriankilMe.com, to get tickets.

Some tickets remain VIP passed as possible, but the numbers are getting really high. It's history, Liberty, and laughs. It's really a lot of fun, interesting. Look back at our great past and look forward at our future. See you there.

BrianKilme.com. Fox stands united with Loved One Louisiana in support of the victims and families impacted by the New Year's Day French Quarter terrorist attack. Visit go.fox forward slash NOLA to support. That's go.fox forward slash NOLA. Listen to the show ad-free on Fox News Podcast Plus, on Apple Podcast, Amazon Music with your Prime membership, or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Mm.