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The Last Word with Lawrence ODonnell - Season 13 - Episode 03
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00:00Being a Trump supporter requires a never-before-seen-in-politics superhuman ability
00:07to manage personal, public, deep humiliation. Being a Trump supporter means Donald Trump
00:17will humiliate you. He will humiliate you with your families, who you told last year that the
00:25reason you are supporting Donald Trump is that he's not one of those regime-change Republicans.
00:29He's not one of those Republican presidents like both of the presidents, Bush, who invades foreign
00:35countries to change their leadership. Every Trump supporter who said that about Donald Trump, told
00:41their kids that about Donald Trump last year, has now been humiliated by Donald Trump once again.
00:49Every Republican member of Congress was in favor of freer trade around the world, meaning lower
00:56tariffs around the world until Donald Trump became the Republican nominee for president
01:00for the first time. And then they just went silent when Donald Trump turned the Republican Party from
01:07the anti-tariff party to the tariff party, the sales tax party, because that is what a tariff is,
01:14a sales tax paid by Americans into the United States Treasury, just like income taxes. Republicans
01:20who based their entire careers on never raising taxes support Donald Trump's raising taxes on you through
01:29tariffs. That is the kind of humiliating flip-flop that used to destroy political careers.
01:36Senator Lindsey Graham is a case study in deep, personal humiliation.
01:46He's a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot. He doesn't represent my party. He doesn't represent
01:54the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for. And you know how you
01:58make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell. And then Donald Trump attacked Lindsey
02:06Graham and gave out Lindsey Graham's cell phone number on television during one of his rallies.
02:12And how did Lindsey Graham fight back? By spending every day of the rest of his political career
02:21publicly worshiping Donald Trump. Jimmy Kimmel now says that Lindsey Graham is now the closest
02:27Donald Trump has come to owning a dog. Five years ago today, Lindsey Graham summoned the courage
02:36to break with Donald Trump for the first time since he had become Donald Trump's pet.
02:45I hate it then this way. Oh my God, I hate it. From my point of view, he's been a
02:50consequential president.
02:51But today, first thing you'll see. All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough.
03:02That was five years ago tonight. And enough was not enough.
03:08That was right after Donald Trump urged a mob he had publicly summoned to Washington to fight like hell.
03:15And they did. They fought like hell. They violently fought like hell and attacked the Capitol in search
03:20of the vice president of the United States, who they publicly declared they wanted to murder.
03:27And Donald Trump watched on TV and did nothing to stop them, which is exactly what you would do if
03:34you
03:34were hoping that they would succeed. Five years ago on this date, Donald Trump was lying to his most
03:41violent followers about an election that he lost. And today, Donald Trump was lying again. In fact,
03:49every day Donald Trump speaks into a microphone, he lies. Today, his lies included what appeared to be
03:54the hallucination of a neurologically declining mind when he said, we are getting rich because of tariffs.
04:02No country in history has ever gotten rich because of tariffs. It's impossible to get rich because of
04:08tariffs. Tariffs are sales taxes imposed at the point of entry on foreign goods sold in the United
04:15States. The tariffs are paid exclusively by Americans in the United States. And so what Donald Trump calls
04:21getting rich because of tariffs is actually the United States Treasury under Donald Trump's control,
04:27taking your money away from you in the form of tariffs and putting it in the United States Treasury.
04:36Those tariffs are paid by the American companies that import those goods. And when they sell those
04:41goods to you, the tariffs that they have paid are included in the price that you pay. And that's how
04:47you pay tariffs every day that Donald Trump is president. Today, Donald Trump hallucinated that that
04:53meant money pouring into our country. Not one penny has come into this country in its history because of
05:03tariffs. Keep that in mind when you watch a 79 year old man in full hallucination mode with imagined
05:10conversations that never happened about tariffs. We get rich because of tariffs, by the way. I hope
05:19everyone understands that they hate to report. We have over 650 billion dollars poured into our country
05:27or coming in shortly because of tariffs. You know, they're finding all of these pockets of
05:33money a couple of weeks ago. Sir, we're off by 39 billion dollars. Oh, is that good or bad? Meaning,
05:43do we have it or are we short of it? Sir, it's 39 billion that we can't account for.
05:50That means we have an extra 39. Yes, sir. I said, well, what do you think? We just don't know
05:57where
05:58it came from. I said, check the tariff shelf. Sir, that tariff doesn't start until September.
06:05I said, no, no. It started about a month and a half ago. Check it. Comes back 25 minutes later.
06:13Sir,
06:13you were right. I came from tariffs. This never happened to us before. Where we find plus 39
06:21billion, not million, plus 39 billion. They were missing. We've taken in 650 billion dollars or
06:29shortcoming. And that's because I'm being nice.
06:34That's Donald Trump publicly flunking a neurological exam. That is as demented as
06:42a president could possibly get. Donald Trump's lies into that same microphone included the lie
06:48that Nicolas Maduro, quote, killed millions of people, end quote. That is a grotesque lie.
06:55And it dishonors the real suffering of people who were killed by a single dictator, who did indeed
07:02kill millions of people. No one in the 21st century has done that. Nicolas Maduro may well
07:08have killed thousands of people, but he has not killed even hundreds of thousands of people,
07:13never mind millions of people. The person who did do that was Adolf Hitler. And today,
07:18Donald Trump pretended that the dictator of 21st century Venezuela was as bad as the Nazi dictator
07:26of Germany who tried to conquer all of Europe, Adolf Hitler, who ordered the execution and extermination
07:32of six million Jews in an attempt to wipe out the Jewish people. Donald Trump equates Maduro to Hitler.
07:44Donald Trump will lie about anything. And if you are Lindsey Graham today, if you are a Republican
07:49supporting Donald Trump today, you must never contradict the lies. Donald Trump's most attention
07:57getting lie these days is about Greenland. Donald Trump is never going to invade Greenland. That's
08:03the fake distraction story he wants you to chase. Donald Trump's never going to make a move on Greenland
08:08in any way. Donald Trump is never going to buy it. He's never going to stop talking about Greenland,
08:13though, because the news media cannot resist paying attention to it. Even senators are falling for it.
08:19Greenland is Donald Trump's distraction. If you spend a minute talking about anything Donald Trump
08:24says about Greenland, you are falling for his game. Donald Trump has thrown around threats to a bunch
08:30of countries since invading Venezuela because he wants to normalize the idea of invading countries.
08:37And the only one, the only country that Donald Trump and Marco Rubio and now Lindsey Graham are serious
08:43about is Cuba. Cuban Americans like Marco Rubio, whose parents left Cuba before the Castro dictatorship
08:52came to power, have been dreaming for 65 years of regime change in Cuba. What we saw in Venezuela,
08:59what we now know was masterminded in months of secret planning by Marco Rubio is as close to a dress
09:05rehearsal of an invasion of Cuba as is possible and is as geographically close to Cuba as possible for such
09:12a
09:12rehearsal. It's not about Venezuela. It's not about the oil. We're never going to get the oil. Donald Trump is
09:18playing games
09:19with the oil to distract from the real game, the real target, which is Cuba. Cuba has always been the
09:28ultimate
09:28target for Republican regime change dreamers. And today, after Lindsey Graham dismissed the idea
09:36of trying to take over Greenland, Lindsey Graham said this about Cuba.
09:46What Trump has done here, he's looked at the economic potential in our backyard and Cuba. The communist
09:55dictatorship in Cuba is literally on life support. It cannot survive, in my view, without Venezuela and Russia.
10:04And both of them have been taken out of the game. So they'll come a day, sooner rather than later,
10:10where that dictatorship will go away. The easy way or the hard way?
10:18The easy way or the hard way? So the easy way is to just watch the Cuban government collapse
10:23now that they can't get Venezuelan oil. And the hard way, what's that?
10:27The hard way would be the kind of invasion that failed in 1961 when the United States attempted to
10:32invade Cuba for regime change at the Bay of Pigs on the south side of Cuba. That invasion failed
10:37miserably. But now Marco Rubio has shown Donald Trump how to do it, using Venezuela as the rehearsal hall.
10:47And now, now they can do Cuba the hard way.
10:54That dictatorship will go away. The easy way or the hard way.
11:00And once it happens, and the people in Cuba can have a free and fair election,
11:04then they'll have a tremendous opportunity to create a Cuba that's like Singapore or Hong Kong.
11:12It could be a place where you're rewarded for investing in business. It could be a Singapore,
11:20Hong Kong, Las Vegas. It could be a marvelous destination for business and tourism.
11:30They are very calmly serious about Cuba. Republicans have wanted regime change in Cuba for 65 years.
11:40Just when you think you've heard the stupidest question that Washington reporters can ask,
11:45one of them outdoes them all.
11:50Is it something that the United States could maybe build a military base there as well?
11:55What? Sky's the limit. Might be a good thing to have a base there. I don't know. I'll let Trump
12:02decide that.
12:05A military base in Cuba? Lindsey Graham doesn't know? Yeah, that would be really amazing.
12:13But we already have a military base in Cuba, at the southern coast of Cuba. The United States of
12:21America still owns and operates a massive military base at Guantanamo Bay, which is Cuba.
12:29And Lindsey Graham, knowing that, childishly says, I'll let Donald Trump decide that.
12:36Wait till Donald Trump finds out that Guantanamo Bay is in Cuba.
12:42The Trump approach is to take a distressed property, fix it up, and create value.
12:50And I look at Venezuela and Cuba as countries full of very talented people that have been run poorly,
12:58with unlimited potential. And you'll never realize that potential until you have new leadership.
13:04That new leadership will come not from us over the arc of time, but from a free and fair election,
13:11so we can partner with the United States and have in our backyard countries that are aligned with the
13:17United States. Can you imagine what could happen in Cuba if we had an honest government aligned with
13:23the United States, building a destination of choice?
13:28They are serious about Cuba. They do not care about Venezuela. They have never cared about
13:34Venezuela. The only thing they have cared about is that Venezuela helps Cuba by supplying oil to Cuba.
13:40Cuba is the dream. Venezuela is the rehearsal. They aren't going to go after the oil. That is Trump
13:48just distracting people, and maybe Trump even believing it, but everyone knows that isn't really possible.
13:53Well, Marco Rubio has had to do a lot of flip-flops to become a Trump supporter after being a
13:59Trump
13:59attacker in 2016. But Marco Rubio has wanted regime change in Cuba his entire life.
14:07Five years ago tonight, Marco Rubio also thought that he was finished with Donald Trump.
14:16We had police officers, the men and women that we walked by every single day that guard the doors and
14:21we say hello to out there with riot gear getting spit on and attacked.
14:27He stopped caring about those police officers very quickly and returned to the worship of Donald Trump
14:35so that he could then ultimately now become secretary of state and fulfill the dream,
14:43the dream of regime change in Cuba. Here is what one Republican congresswoman said
14:48after Donald Trump incited the attack on the Capitol.
14:54He needs to be held accountable. He needs to be in a position where he
14:56never runs for office again, can never hold office again. The violence was incited by the rhetoric.
15:02It was not just the president. There were other people, members of my own party that were at the rally,
15:07members of my own party leading up to the rally, the rhetoric that was posted online on social media.
15:12I risked and members of Congress risked their life for a largely ceremonial vote.
15:20Carswoman Nancy Mace didn't just condemn Donald Trump. She condemned the Republican Party. She
15:24condemned members of her own party for helping to incite the attack on the Capitol. And in as full a
15:30public humiliation as you could ever imagine, Nancy Mace once again became a faithful Donald Trump supporter.
15:40Those people, Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Nancy Mace, hundreds of other elected Republicans in
15:46Washington, including J.D. Vance, have to manage a level of public humiliation previously unimaginable
15:54in their choice to support a man who they at some point condemned.
16:00Former special prosecutor Jack Smith explained to the Republican run House Judiciary Committee why he
16:06believed his indictment of Donald Trump and the case he would have presented against Donald Trump
16:10included proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Donald Trump was guilty of a conspiracy
16:14to overthrow the 2020 presidential election.
16:19The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most
16:29responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that
16:37happened at the Capitol as part of this case does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were
16:43doing this for his benefit. Our view of the evidence was that he caused it and that he exploited it
16:51and that
16:52it was foreseeable to him. Once the attack on the Capitol happened, he refused to stop it. He instead issued
17:03a tweet
17:05that, without question in my mind, endangered the life of his own vice president.
17:13And when the violence was going on, he had to be pushed repeatedly by his staff members to do anything
17:21to quell it.
17:22There is no historical analog for what President Trump did in this case. As we said in the indictment,
17:31he was free to say that he thought he won the election. He was even free to say falsely that
17:40he
17:40won the election. But what he was not free to do was violate federal law and use knowingly false
17:48statements about election fraud to target a lawful government function. That he was not allowed to
17:54do. And that differentiates this case from any past history.
18:02Republican Liz Cheney, who served as vice chair of the House Select Committee to investigate the
18:07January 6th attack on the United States Capitol, described Donald Trump's conduct on this day,
18:11five years ago.
18:14Among the most shameful of this committee's findings was that President Trump sat in the dining room
18:22off the Oval Office, watching the violent riot at the Capitol on television.
18:28For hours, he would not issue a public statement instructing his supporters to disperse and leave
18:34the Capitol, despite urgent pleas from his White House staff and dozens of others to do so. Members of his
18:41family, his White House lawyers, virtually all those around him knew that this simple act was critical.
18:48For hours, he would not do it. During this time, law enforcement agents were attacked and seriously
18:57injured. The Capitol was invaded, the electoral count was halted, and the lives of those in the Capitol were
19:03put at risk. In addition to being unlawful, as described in our report, this was an utter moral failure and
19:12a clear
19:13dereliction of duty. Today, House Democrats held a hearing titled after January 6th, setting the record
19:21straight on the Capitol insurrection, a woman convicted of crimes for her part in the attack on the Capitol.
19:27Pamela Hempel said this.
19:32I pleaded guilty to my crimes because I did the crime.
19:39I received due process and the DOJ was not weaponized against me.
19:50When Donald Trump pardoned us, I rejected the pardon.
19:56Accepting that pardon would be lying about what happened on January the 6th.
20:04I am guilty, and I own that guilt. I came here on January the 6th.
20:13I went from Trump's speech to the Capitol because I thought Mr. Trump would go to the Capitol with us.
20:22I heard people saying that Trump was going to walk down to the Capitol, so I went.
20:28Well, as you know, Donald Trump never showed.
20:34But the rioters did.
20:37And the attack began.
20:49The police officers were the heroes.
20:56They protected the Capitol and everyone inside the Capitol.
21:03And even people like me.
21:07I was trampled on by the rioters.
21:12And if it weren't for the Capitol Police helping me that day, I might have died.
21:22To the Capitol Police officers sitting, if I may address you for a minute.
21:33I am truly sorry from the bottom of my heart for being part of the mob that put you and
21:42so many officers in danger.
21:45I want the Capitol Police to know how truly grateful I am to them and how deeply sorry I am.
21:57I can't believe people are still disrespecting you and trying to lie about January the 6th.
22:06I will do everything I can to stop the lies about our brave officers like you who protected us during
22:20the attack.
22:23Speaking about January the 6th has caused a great risk to my personal safety.
22:31I have been doxxed online, harassed, and physically assaulted.
22:38But I am here and I don't care.
22:41I won't let it stop me.
22:44I can't sit here while Mr. Trump and others are lying.
22:51I also want others who feel like me to know that we must stop the lies being pushed by the
23:02public leaders and Trump himself.
23:08Leading off our discussion tonight is Andrew Weissman, former FBI general counsel and an MS now legal analyst.
23:14Andrew, really extraordinary testimony there from Pamela Hempel, who was involved in the attack in the Capitol, was convicted for
23:21it.
23:22She says today the police officers were the heroes, something Donald Trump will never say.
23:31In fact, the White House issued today from the White House account, from the seat of American power,
23:42a series of false statements about what happened on January 6th.
23:49And Ms. Hempel's testimony today, which was really the capstone of the hearing and so moving, as you just heard,
23:59shows more courage and more honesty than we've seen from all of the Republican members of Congress
24:09who were present on January 6th who know better in terms of what happened than what the White House has
24:17issued.
24:17All of the people who were in the White House that day know better.
24:23They know that what has been issued by the White House today is a series of lies.
24:29Ms. Hempel's statement that you really can't do better than, which is we must stop the lies,
24:39is something that shows more integrity and more adherence to the truth than we're seeing from so many people
24:45in government who owe us so much more on January 6th, a day where we really should have a reckoning
24:55and not engage in the whitewashing, which is a particularly apt term when you're dealing with Donald Trump,
25:04of what happened that day and the true victims that day.
25:10Andrew, we now have Jack Smith's eight hours of testimony in addition to his very detailed indictment
25:17of Donald Trump with real specifics in there, but of exactly what Donald Trump did, in addition to the
25:24House Investigative Committee that Liz Cheney was a part of that we just saw. The material on what Donald
25:31Trump did that day is exhaustive and full and no Republican has ever come up with a counter narrative
25:40of heroism by Donald Trump that day.
25:45Now, I mean, one of the things that the White House is trying to do is say it's it's all
25:50Nancy Pelosi's
25:52fault. They even blame the Capitol Police as if the Capitol Police wanted to have themselves hurt.
25:57They don't explain, though, that if Donald Trump, as he now claims, just wanted peace,
26:05why he didn't react to what he now is claiming he was against, which was violence at the Capitol.
26:12Well, then why didn't he do anything about it? Why did he, as Jack Smith noted in the clip you
26:17played,
26:18why did he issue a tweet that Jack Smith, I think correctly noted, endangered the life of his own
26:25vice president? I mean, that that is how not just bizarre, but just how unfeeling how there's just
26:34nothing, no, no bottom to the sort of depravity of that day. And it's such a dishonor to what happened
26:44to have today on the fifth anniversary to have this sort of continued lie. I would note, though,
26:52in your litany of evidence that the one thing we still do not have is Jack Smith's report with respect
26:59to the Mar-a-Lago case, because Judge Cannon is still sitting on the motion to have that unsealed.
27:08She had claimed that it was under seal and needs to remain under seal because the case was pending.
27:14But that case is over. And yet she still has not released that report and said that it can be
27:22made public to complete the record of what at least Jack Smith and grand juries have found that
27:31sitting president of the United States has done both in Washington and in Florida.
27:36Andrew Weissman, thank you very much for starting off our coverage tonight.
27:39You're welcome. Coming up, Senator Mark Kelly will join us with his response to Pete Hegseth's
27:46letter of censure to him that Senator Kelly received. That's next.
27:55Yesterday, Senator Mark Kelly received this letter from Pete Hegseth on a fraudulent piece of
28:02stationary fraudulently identifying Pete Hegseth as secretary of war, a position that does not
28:11exist. It was a letter of censure that is a first step in Pete Hegseth's attempt to punish Senator
28:19Kelly for saying exactly what Pete Hegseth had public publicly said a few years ago, that military
28:24personnel should not follow unlawful orders. Here was Senator Kelly's response to that letter today.
28:33They talk about things I've said between June and December, including that they think it's
28:42inappropriate for me to criticize them for firing admirals and generals. Now remember,
28:48I'm on the Armed Services Committee. I voted for those admirals and generals to have those jobs,
28:54and Pete Hegseth fired those people in my view because of the color of their skin and their gender.
29:01That's a horrible thing to do and a horrible message to people out there, that you have to look a
29:08certain
29:08way to serve this country at the highest level. And I was critical of them in my role as a
29:17member of
29:17the committee. And they didn't like it. That's one of the reasons they have censured me. And at the end
29:22of
29:23the letter, they threaten criminal prosecution if they don't like what I say going forward. Let me
29:31make it perfectly clear. This letter for anything that Pete Hegseth says or does to me is in no way
29:43going to affect the way I do my job and represent my constituents in the United States Senate. Ain't
29:49happening. So, you know, his option, you know, right now is he can continue with this kind of
29:55bullshit or he can go take a hike. That's his options. And if I have an opportunity to,
30:00you know, tell him that tomorrow, maybe I will.
30:04Joining us now is retired Navy captain, now Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. He's a member
30:10of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee.
30:13Senator, you're going to see Pete Hegseth tomorrow. It's going to be all hundred senators in a briefing.
30:19You might not be able in that large group to get that moment that you might want with him. But
30:24if you
30:24do, what would you say to him tomorrow? Well, I usually try to keep these things
30:31pretty professional, not like him and some of the folks that work for him. I mean, if I was to
30:38talk
30:38to him about this, I mean, this brief is going to be about Venezuela and I'll have some questions
30:43about that. But if I was to talk to him about this, I would tell him, hey, regardless of what
30:48you
30:48try to do to me, I'm going to continue to do my job. And you cannot go after U.S.
30:54citizens,
30:55retired service members, in my case, for something they said that that was truthful.
31:01I said something the president didn't like. He said I should be hanged, executed. And then he got
31:08Pete Hegseth on this path that has now led to this letter of censure and this threat to reduce me
31:16in rank
31:17and take some of my retirement. So I would tell him that that I would tell the secretary of defense
31:23that this is just not going to work. I'm not backing down. I'm not going to go away. I'm going
31:28to continue
31:28to do my job. As you go forward, when when you're subject to this kind of letter, simply because of
31:40your service in the military, other senators who never served in the military, people like Donald Trump
31:45who never served in the military could never be subject to it, could never receive a letter like
31:49this. Yeah, because I'm retired, because I spent 25 years in the United States Navy,
31:55because I flew 39 combat missions. I almost got shot down a bunch of times. I had a missile blow
32:01up
32:01next to my airplane once. I flew in space four times because I had that long career of service.
32:07They think this gives them the right to go after me personally and to threaten me with criminal
32:15prosecution or execution because they just very simply didn't like what I said.
32:22So when President Dwight Eisenhower warned against the military industrial complex,
32:28people like Pete Hegseth, if they were around, might have tried to censure a former general
32:35president of the United States, Dwight Eisenhower.
32:40I don't think Dwight Eisenhower would take any crap from Pete Hegseth. So I wouldn't be too worried,
32:47too worried about that. I mean, Pete Hegseth is in no way qualified for this job.
32:53Donald Trump should have never offered him this job. I think it says a lot, probably possibly says
33:00a lot more about Donald Trump that Pete Hegseth is in this position than it says about Pete Hegseth.
33:06Senator Mark Kelly, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
33:11Thank you for having me on, Lawrence. Thank you. Coming up, the Trump Justice
33:15Department has admitted they have released only one percent of the Epstein files in defiance of
33:22the law passed by our next guest, Congressman Ro Khanna, who joins us next.
33:31Yesterday, Donald Trump's Justice Department said in writing to a judge that they have released only
33:36about one percent of the Epstein files. The Justice Department's statement said to date,
33:41the department has now posted to the DOJ Epstein library web page approximately 12,285 documents in
33:49response to the Epstein files Transparency Act. And there are more than two million documents
33:55potentially responsive to the act that are in various phases of review. Joining us now is
34:01Democratic Congressman Ro Khanna of California. He's a member of the House Oversight Committee.
34:05Congressman Khanna, your law that you passed and Donald Trump signed requires the Justice
34:11Department to follow procedures and gives them deadlines for releasing 100 percent of the Epstein
34:17files. Is the Trump Justice Department complying with your law?
34:23No, they're not. By their own admission, there are millions of documents that they have not released.
34:29These documents include the witnesses' own statements to the FBI where they named the rich
34:36and powerful men who were on the rape island who abused them. That's what people want to see.
34:40And Thomas Massey and I actually are planning to write a letter as a friend of the court,
34:46an amike cure letter to the judge saying that it's time for the judge to appoint a special master
34:53to make sure that the Justice Department actually releases these documents,
34:57doesn't have excessive redactions, and we get the truth.
35:02It would seem clear now, even to the judge, just how out of compliance the Trump Justice
35:09Department is on this.
35:11Absolutely. I mean, the Justice Department is admitting it. They're saying,
35:15we've only released one percent of the files. We've only released one percent of what we were required
35:21by law. And we haven't released the actual things that people want to see, the prosecution memos.
35:27We have not released the witness statements. The judges, I think, are very frustrated.
35:32And at this point, we can't trust the Department of Justice. In these kind of cases,
35:36you usually have a special master. They review the documents. They make sure that they're not
35:41redactions and they make sure everything is released. By the way, they missed their deadline
35:45to Congress. They had a deadline a few days ago to explain why they're redacting what they're
35:51redacting. They missed that as well. Congressman Ro Khanna, we will stay on it.
35:56Thank you very much for joining us tonight. Thank you.
35:59And coming up one year ago this week, Los Angeles was on fire and Jacob Soboroff was leading our
36:06coverage. His new book is titled Firestorm. And he joins us next.
36:15No one in Los Angeles has been complaining about the almost nonstop drenching rain for more than a
36:21week over the Christmas and New Year's holidays. Because if that rain had come one year ago on the
36:27same dates, then the most horrific fires in Los Angeles history would not have occurred this week,
36:35one year ago.
36:39If you are considering staying in your home, it is the wrong decision. Get out now. We haven't seen
36:44anything like this ever before, Lawrence. Certainly not in my lifetime. And I've evacuated from my
36:50childhood home during fires. Nothing like this. The winds have been whipping in a way that few of us,
36:56I think, couldn't recall. It has been drier than normal here in Southern California. There's barely
37:01been any rain this rain season. And so it is a tinderbox out here.
37:07Janus Now is MS Now's senior political and national reporter, Jacob Soboroff. His new book
37:12out today is Firestorm, the great Los Angeles fires and America's new age of disaster. Jacob,
37:21what a difference a year makes. The drenching rain of this holiday season one year ago could have saved
37:28the city. I have been thinking about that, Lawrence, over the last several weeks in Los Angeles. And I
37:34think I even spoke to Governor Newsom last Friday about this. It was a tinderbox ready to go. And I
37:39will
37:40never forget the nights that I spent on the air talking to you about a community that you and I
37:44both know very intimately. And it's part of the reason that I wanted to write the book. How do you
37:49watch your own neighborhood carbonize before your eyes? It's impossible to comprehend in real time.
37:54And that's what Firestorm is all about, the fire of the future that I could not possibly understand
37:59as I stood there watching Los Angeles burn. Some of us with homes in Los Angeles had to evacuate
38:07living in areas where we never dreamed that that was possible. You'd been through it before as a kid
38:13in the in the Palisades. But what are the lessons now going forward?
38:19I think we'll see in the book and what a career emergency management official has told me
38:23about what I experienced. And this is a person that has served under both Republican and Democratic
38:28administrations who spoke to me outside of his official capacity is that this was a confluence of many
38:34events. It was obviously the global climate emergency. It was our infrastructure falling
38:38apart. It was changes in the way we live, thousands of electric car batteries exploding at any given
38:43time. But it was also the politics of misinformation and disinformation, which when people read the book,
38:49they're going to see a bunch of behind the scenes maneuvering both by Governor Gavin Newsom,
38:54at the time President-elect Trump, and Elon Musk, who was sowing the seeds, pouring rhetorical
39:00fuel on the very real flames that made not just recovering from the fire, but actually getting
39:05through it difficult for so many people that were living in Los Angeles at the time.
39:09Jacob, I have to ask you about your own health, because when people, when evacuation orders were
39:16lifted and people were able to go back to their homes, many of them didn't. Many of them were afraid
39:20to even breathe the air on their streets, even though the fire didn't reach their streets.
39:26You were in the thick of it, breathing it all in.
39:30I was, and it pales in comparison to what firefighters experienced. You'll read about
39:35Nick Shuler from Cal Fire in the book, who has been a firefighter for decades, and he said this was
39:40the first time that he thought about in the middle of a fire like this, it's possible I'm going to
39:45get
39:45cancer. You'll read about Eric Mendoza, a firefighter from Station 69 in the Palisades, who after four
39:51days literally stepped on the gas and drove home to get home to Acton. And the minute he crossed the
39:56threshold of his house, he collapsed, barely being able to breathe. And his daughter and his wife had
40:00to take him to urgent care for corticosteroids and oxygen in order to recover from being in this fire.
40:06It's part of fighting the fire of the future is that the materials that we are breathing in,
40:10the places that we are living, not just in the wildland urban interface, but in the homes and the lives
40:15that we
40:16lead today are more dangerous than they ever have been. And when these fires are becoming bigger, encroaching
40:22upon communities like this and in Lahaina, in Hawaii, when people literally had to run for their lives and
40:28jump in the ocean, what's burning is no longer just chaparral in the mountains. It is the everyday
40:35livelihoods of all of us.
40:37And Jacob, the lesson, it seems to me for anyone who didn't, has ever never been through it is if
40:44you ever get
40:45the word that it's coming your way, do not stop and think about anything, get out of there.
40:50And that's what you delivered so importantly in your coverage was get out of there.
40:56In the book, Lawrence, as well, it is a minute by minute accounting of some of the things that
41:01I think maybe a lot of us have forgotten on television. It reminded me of being in my seventh
41:04day of school at 9-11 in 2001 in New York, throngs of people with suitcases and wheelchairs,
41:11people literally running for their lives in the streets of Los Angeles with flames encroaching
41:16upon them behind them. It's not a sci-fi thriller, even if it reads like one. This is the lived
41:22reality
41:23of so many people now in the second biggest city, most populous county in America.
41:28Jacob Soverev, the new book is Firestorm, the Great Los Angeles Fires in America's New Age of
41:34Disaster. Jacob, thank you very much for your coverage throughout the fire, which was truly heroic.
41:39And thank you for this book. Thank you, Lawrence. I appreciate it. We'll be right back.
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