Bill Maher Says Politicians Are Absolutely Partially to Blame for L.A. Fires | TMZ Live - video Dailymotion

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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.

Transcript

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.

Bill Maher Says Politicians Are Absolutely Partially to Blame for L.A. Fires | TMZ Live

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