Bill Maher is furious at folks who are lecturing Angelenos to stop blaming politicians for the devastating fires ... he says that exactly where a big part of the blame lies.
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00:00A lot of people were saying, how dare any of us talk about the politics of fire
00:07as the city burned here in LA a couple of weeks ago.
00:11Yeah.
00:12And a lot of people want to talk about that because there were things that did go wrong.
00:18And there's a big division in LA now.
00:21Is it okay to talk about this now?
00:23Is it okay to point the finger at our mayor, Karen Bass, our governor, Gavin Newsom, and others?
00:32Or should we just shut up and say nothing while people try to recover from this tragedy?
00:39Bill Maher, his show is back.
00:42And he talked about this in his editorial Friday night.
00:47And he did not hold any punches back.
00:50He is pissed.
00:52We may not be able to do much about the weather,
00:55but we do need a better plan for putting out a burning city than waiting for rain.
01:00Axios ran a story on how getting the water out of the hydrants in Pacific Palisades was more complicated than it seems.
01:06I'm sure it is.
01:08I'm sure it's very complicated.
01:10That's why I pay 13% of my income in this state every year to people who I assumed were working on things like this.
01:16When asked why so many of the hydrants in the Palisades ran out of water,
01:20Governor Newsom said the local folks are trying to figure that out.
01:24Yeah, you got to do that before the fire.
01:26The mayor said about cuts to the fire department's budget.
01:30There were no reductions that were made that would have impacted the situation.
01:34The fire chief here had a slightly different take.
01:37She said we are screaming to be properly funded.
01:40Well, by the way, Bill Maher, among the thousands of people who are also evacuated, his home was spared.
01:47But people are pissed.
01:49People are really pissed.
01:51And it's not like this fire would have been entirely preventable.
01:56But there were clearly issues.
01:59And remember, Gavin Newsom said initially that he didn't think there was blame regarding the water and everything.
02:06And then when the heat started to come over what the government had done,
02:10then he ordered an investigation by the Department of Water and Power.
02:15So which is it?
02:17I think everyone has the right to be mad.
02:19And I also think everyone has the right to call out politicians.
02:22And that's why I think Bill Maher is missing the point of it.
02:25People were saying don't call out politicians when everyone's evacuating and when we're still trying to put this fire out.
02:31That's what the argument was. And I actually disagree with Bill in that respect.
02:36It's like if there's an ongoing crisis, it's you shouldn't be doing cheap shots at politicians.
02:42Like it's not a time for the right or the left to be scoring points.
02:46How's that a cheap shot? How's that a cheap shot?
02:48I'm saying when the crisis was going on, when fires were going on in the Palisades,
02:53you had people like Rick Caruso who were going on the news who were saying,
02:57hey, you know, this wouldn't have happened under my watch.
03:00And then you had Elon Musk tweeting out saying, hey, you know, you L.A.,
03:03you could have had Caruso when Elon wasn't even campaigning for him, when Caruso was running.
03:08And that's just one example.
03:10But I'm saying I saw a lot of that during the crisis. And that's pretty lame.
03:14The only thing I say is it doesn't have any effect on fighting the actual fire.
03:18Right. I mean, they can be critical in the fire.
03:20People can also still work to get courageously work to get the fires out. Right.
03:24And the other thing, I just cannot get this out of my head.
03:27This image of this guy in Altadena whose wife went to a grocery store to buy bottled water to throw it on fire
03:35because they couldn't get firemen there.
03:37And one of the things Bill Maher showed was there were a hundred fire trucks out of service,
03:42because they didn't have the money to fix them.
03:45And they're sitting in a yard while the city is burning down. That's a failure of leadership.
03:50So again, yeah, to reiterate, I'm not saying people shouldn't criticize politicians.
03:55You absolutely should. And there were glaring issues that happened during the fires
03:59that people like Mayor Karen Bass and other politicians should be held accountable.
04:04I'm saying when the crisis was going on, when the fires were happening,
04:09a lot of people were pointing at politicians.
04:11And I think other people were saying, don't focus on the politicians right now.
04:16Focus on helping people then address the politicians.
04:20Mike Gallagher here in Chicago.
04:21I think it's really unfortunate that this conversation is really about to take new heights.
04:26I mean, while the fire was going on, it is understood that we should be concerned
04:30with helping these individuals who are losing everything.
04:33But unfortunately, the politics took over.
04:35And as we saw Rick Caruso make it to Bill Maher's show, so it's very unfortunate.
04:41But I ultimately think politicians are at the base of it.
04:45But there has to be a bigger investigation before we can sort it out
04:48and before we can make a reasonable assessment in regards to the matter.
04:52Our hearts go out to those in California who lost everything.
04:54Yeah, no kidding. And I got to tell you, you know,
04:57as the days go on and you start running into people who have these impossible circumstances
05:04that they're dealing with, it's just...
05:05I think Newsom's done, by the way, on a national level.
05:09I don't think he's... there's no presidential run for him.
05:11I think that's it.
05:12Dude, you said that about Donald Trump.
05:13True. All right. We'll see. Stay tuned.