Best of the Program | Guests: Brad Meltzer & Gabriel Kirkpatrick Mann | 1/17/25

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Everything that we are saying goodbye to from this administration on Monday and the turning of the page.

What we should be thinking about this weekend and on Monday.

Also, an incredible movie that was turned down both by HBO and Netflix.

It's called Hot Shots, and it's all about the California wildfires made before this one.

You'll understand once you hear from Gabriel Kirkpatrick Mann exactly why they turned that down and why you should watch it now.

And one of my favorite people in the world, Brad Meltzer, the JFK conspiracy.

He's just discovered there was a hit on JFK just before he became president.

And you've never heard of it.

Why?

Brad Meltzer joins me on today's podcast.

Bernal Launcher.

I am a gun owner.

I believe in the Second Amendment.

I believe in being prepared for every situation.

But I also know that according to law enforcement, 99% of all situations where force may be required doesn't require lethal force.

Do you know why Bernamotte Launcher was first designed?

The guy who designed the Bernal Launcher was in a road rage incident.

Some guy just was just raging against him,

and

he pulls over to the side thinking that the guy would just pass him.

He didn't.

He gets out of this car.

The guy who designed Bernal Launcher first went for his gun and said, no, I don't want to get into a gunfight.

Well, he was beaten to an inch of his life on the side of the road by this guy.

He deemed never again.

Burna, B-Y-R-N-A dot com slash Glenn.

Burna.com slash Glenn.

Go there now.

You're listening to

the best of the Glenbeck program.

Three days, but three days.

Three days.

The fundamental transformation of America.

Yeah, yeah.

No more of this guy, no more of her, no more of them.

You know, but I think it's a lot bigger than that.

I was thinking about this today when I was driving in, that

this administration exiting is not just another exit, you know, exit of a president.

It's not the same.

And it wasn't like this in 16, although we hoped it would be, but it is this time because the people and the feeling in the country, even among Democrats, is different now.

We're about to turn the page and enter

a new era or a new chapter.

We're really standing on the edge.

Monday is a moment far larger than politics, but it's only the beginning.

It's not just the end of a presidency, not the changing of the guard.

It is truly the end of an era, an era marked by madness

by confusion by division distortion a deafening cacophony of chaos

all of that has drowned out reason and common sense and it you know it didn't it didn't start yesterday

as much as the left tried to make this all about words by twisting meaning redefining words or using words in ways quite honestly, to use their words in mis, dis or malinformation.

This era is not going to be remembered by the words, but by the actions of those who spoke the millions of those meaningless words.

We can see right now

the destruction of our economy, our security,

in really, really clear terms in the homes and the hearths of California, that it is the actions of people that matter more than simple words.

By their fruits, ye shall know them.

The fruit of this tree is rotted, and people now are beginning to see that.

Now, like I said, this didn't begin four years ago.

It turned it up to volume number 10,

but this has been brewing for decades.

It has been in our institutions far longer than any of us realize,

metastasizing in our culture, our institutions,

and our hearts, and hardening our hearts.

It is an era that we leave on Monday that put truth itself on trial.

Can you even define what truth is anymore?

We went into this place that was so absurd, we couldn't define something as fundamental and self-evident as, can you tell me what a woman is?

Historians are going to look back on this last era that we're now leaving as pure

madness.

But it's also a time

when it took everything in people to question

the powerful mob, to to speak the truth that you believe.

It was a risk that at first far too many people wouldn't do because they were afraid of being shouted down,

canceled, or much, much worse.

Common decency,

the once unspoken bond that united us, was thrown out the window.

It became not only unfashionable, but absolutely unrecognizable.

And everybody was at each other's throats.

Common sense, our old friend, just dismissed, exiled seemingly to the fringes of our society as if it were dangerous now or just wildly outdated.

And we know that.

We didn't know that yesterday, but we know that today.

And I mean, literally yesterday.

How many words changed?

How many things, concepts, huge truths that we knew?

We wake up one day and it was completely being dismissed.

And you'd be like, where did this come from?

We're leaving a time

of breathtaking hypocrisy where those who deny corruption themselves take bribes from hostile nations, where the righteous call for unity while sowing division.

This era, racism has been repackaged and sold back to us under the guise of anti-racism.

Hatred, we're told, is perfectly fine as long as it's aimed at the right people.

And those right people may be the wrong people tomorrow.

Faith in God has been replaced by faith in climate models, sexuality, identity.

In this last era that we're now getting ready to leave,

all of those religions had their own dogmas, their high priests, their rituals, and above all, their lack of forgiveness,

meaning that they were anti-Christ teachings.

But somehow or another, many of our churches embrace them as the message of Christ.

There cannot be Christ in any message that doesn't include forgiveness.

But this isn't where the story ends.

We thought before this election, this might be where our story ends.

But here is the really unbelievable news.

God stepped in, and if you don't recognize that, there is no hope for us.

God stepped in and did something none of us could do.

First of all, he saved the president's life twice.

And if you think that was a secret service, you're nuts.

God saved him twice.

God changed him.

And suddenly, our

society is waking up

this guy who's not our savior

won

and people started flocking to him and willing to take bold stands and say you know what all this crap it's wrong

so this is not the end of an era alone.

It's the beginning of the end of that era, the end of unreasonable hatred of others, not because they look different, but simply because they voted differently.

They didn't think differently.

You know,

it was nothing about actual diversity.

It was all about voting.

It's the end of unquestioning obedience to the so-called media and experts who demand that we follow them without question into the slaughterhouse, hoping, I guess, hoping against hope, many of us, that if we would just comply, our turn on the chopping block would never come.

It's the end of the era of my body, my choice, in everything,

in everything else other than killing your baby.

You can kill your baby.

My body, my choice.

Well, it's not your body that's being killed.

It's the baby's body.

Made no sense.

But boy, oh boy, not with

masks, not with vaccines, not with the basic right to just use your legs and leave your home.

It's an end of an era where we have to ask ourselves: whose side is this government on?

Who is actually running this thing?

What is the actual plan that our leaders have?

How is this helping the average American?

Who is actually the president?

That ends on Monday.

It's the beginning of the end.

There's a lot of work to do.

But it's the beginning of the end of diversity twisted into a weapon where diversity of thought, values, and spirit were just disregarded, replaced by a narrow, suffocating dogma that demanded conformity in all ways.

Even if you were conforming yesterday, yesterday and then somehow or another, through the ether, the mob decided what was true yesterday is no longer true today,

the mob would get you

on anything you disagreed with.

It's the end of the era where dissent was met not with debate, but with just now meaningless labels, racist, fascist, bigot.

I think it's really important that all of us recognize this is not about Democrats.

There are a lot of Democrats that actually woke up.

It's not about Democrats.

It's not about Republicans.

I think both of them stink, quite honestly.

I do.

And that's the message of this new administration.

And you see it with the diversity of people that are actually in this administration.

We don't agree on

lockstep on everything.

Far from it.

The establishment and the Democrats and the Republicans do.

But this isn't about Democrat, Republicans, liberals, conservative, independent.

This is truly about something much, much deeper that begins Monday.

It's older and far more grander than a political party.

It is truly about

the rebirth or the rediscovering of what it truly means to be free.

Monday marks the rebirth of something absolutely extraordinary.

Things we used to find self-evident, the freedoms guaranteed just in our First Amendment,

the freedom to question our government, they work for us, we don't work for them, the freedom to speak our mind,

even the most unpleasant and disruptive things you are allowed to say the freedom to worship,

to live out your beliefs, to be who you are without demanding that others speak, affirm, or even accept your truth.

You know, the one thing that we have forgotten in this last era that I hope we are remembering is that this nation wasn't built by people who all walked in lockstep.

They didn't agree on everything.

In fact, far from it.

It was built by people who often vehemently disagreed on the right path forward, but they shared the common commitment to respecting each other's rights and fulfilling their own responsibilities.

It was built on the idea that disagreement, when handled with humility and respect, makes us stronger, not weaker.

Diversity of thought

is important.

Diversity of skin color doesn't matter.

And so, as we say farewell to an era of absolute chaos,

it's really important that we don't say goodbye in anger or bitterness, and that is hard.

We can't alienate our neighbors or assume the worst of those who see the world differently if we agree on the rebirth of the Bill of Rights and each

responsibility that is tied to those rights.

Monday, I hope we recognize that this is an end of an era this weekend, and Monday

is

an invitation to rebuild, to restore, to renew

an era,

a golden era.

An era that is dawning just in front of all of us, and it belongs to all of us, not just those who won an election or share my view or your view.

It's an era that can only succeed if we remember the lessons of the past and commit to something better to restore hope, not just in our institutions, but in each other.

Renew our faith, not just in God, though that's vital, but also in the idea that people, flawed though they are, can be capable of incredible good.

Seek restoration, not just of our economy but of and our government, but of our hearts, of our communities, of our families, our shared understanding of what it means to be human

and to be free.

This weekend, I want you to bid farewell to all of the chaos.

It's the beginning of the end.

There will be more chaos as we go.

But as we lay it down, leave it behind.

Walk forward.

Leave your fear behind.

Walk in courage, not in hatred, but in love.

Because the truth is, this country has faced darker days than these.

I didn't think we'd make it here, gang.

But every time, this country seems to find the light just at the end.

And we found it.

But it's just flickering, still so fragile in mighty gusts of wind.

But what will happen is not because of a president or Congress or a court.

It will all happen because of you.

So don't wait for anybody else.

Lead the way.

Be the one who chooses faith over fear, courage over conformity, love over hatred.

Let's be the ones who our words are meaningless, but our action speaks volumes.

The one that shows the world that freedom actually works, not because it's easy, but because it is right.

Let me tell you about pre-born.

When you put your hand over your heart, what do you feel?

But said beat, beat, beat beneath your hand.

That's how you know you're alive.

Okay, expecting moms,

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They've been taught to ignore the beating heart.

Okay, but when they see an ultrasound of their unborn child, not just a glob of cells, but a beating heart and a brain and arms and legs, that changes them.

Now, the abortion pill accounts for over 60% of all abortions, and it's available pretty much 24-7.

This is why the ministry of pre-born is so important.

They've got to get those who are going in and give them an ultrasound because that stops a lot of that.

But also, they're fighting on another front now.

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Now, back to the podcast.

You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Brad Meltzer with me.

He and his co-author, Josh Mensch, have just released a new book called The JFK Conspiracy, The Secret Plot to Kill Kennedy and Why It Failed.

Brad, as always.

It's good to see you.

Always good to see you, my friend.

So

let's start with, I mean, kind of where we are right now.

I talked to

Cash Patel eight months ago.

And when he was at DNI, when he was the DNI, he said he saw some of the things.

He didn't tell me what it was.

He said,

but he saw the Kennedy stuff and elsewhere.

And he said, you know, if people see it, they would understand

why it has been kept quiet.

He said, I don't agree with it, but you would understand.

Do you think we're going to get the full disclosure this time?

We were promised it when Trump first took office.

Over and over.

I sit on the board of the National Archives Foundation, as you know.

And believe me, we all want it.

Everyone there wants it.

And I will say this.

I don't think I actually don't think there's some smoking gun.

And here's why.

Because Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald.

And the moment he did that, he took away the one eyewitness who actually was there and knew what happened.

So you can find all these other things, but it will never answer the question, what is Lee Harvey Oswald doing in Russia at the height of the Cold War?

Who do we ask that to?

He's the guy going there and doing it.

And the fact that no, here's the other thing that I always rely on, deathbed confessions.

I'm obsessed with deathbed confessions.

If you look at Watergate and who Deep Throat was,

Bob Woo was going to take it to the grave.

The head of the Washington Post was going to take it to the grave.

And how do we find out who Deep Throat was?

Because Deep Throat got old and said, It's me.

It's me, Mark Felt.

I can't, I'm about to die, and I want the truth to be known.

And in all these years, since that day here in Dallas in 1963, nobody said a word.

And I don't believe that for one second.

There's someone who on their deathbed, and look at the math of where they are.

There's very few people that were alive, you know, were getting there.

So I'm hoping, but that's what I trust more than some paper, you know, bureaucratic paperwork.

So let's talk about this new conspiracy to kill President Kennedy.

I had never heard of it before, and you explain in the book why, but first set it up.

This is before he takes office, right?

Yeah, this is three years before Lee Harvey Oswald, obviously, takes his famous shot, and it is in Palm Beach, Florida.

It's a beautiful Sunday morning, right after JFK has been elected, almost right where we are right now in the presidency.

He's been elected, he's waiting for inauguration, and he's going to church.

Sunday morning, JFK goes to church, and he has no idea that there is a disgruntled postal worker named Richard Pavlik who wants to kill him.

And he's packed his car with seven sticks of dynamite.

He's followed JFK.

He tracked him to Massachusetts.

He tracked him to Palm Beach, Florida, followed him to Florida because he believes that JFK's security is weakest there, which he's right about.

And as JFK leaves his house that morning for church, all this assassin has to do is hit the little trigger device that he's built, and boom, will go the dynamite.

Would he be in the car?

He's in the car.

He writes the letter that says,

I'm not coming back from this.

And what saves JFK's life that day, I don't want to ruin the ending, although I think I just ruined chapter one of the JFK conspiracy.

That's chapter one.

But what saves his life that day has to do with Jackie.

I won't ruin it.

But it's one of the craziest JFK stories you've never heard in your life.

So why haven't we heard this?

That's the right question.

So here's why you don't know this story.

It was a huge story in Miami, in Florida, where it happened.

Miami Herald had a big front page article.

It's about to go nationwide.

It used to back then take an extra day to go from local to nationwide.

And on the day it's going nationwide, two airliners collide over New York City.

Everyone on board dies except for one child, the sole survivor.

Oh, my God.

And America becomes obsessed with this kid, right?

Is he going to live?

Is he going to die?

It knocks this JFK story off the front page, buries it into the middle of the newspaper.

It becomes a footnote to history until my friend Josh Mensch and I find it and we're like, America needs to know this story.

That's where the JFK conspiracy is going to be.

How did you find this story?

Because I'm crazy like you, right?

I mean, we, because we love, listen, your algorithm I know is like my algorithm.

It feeds us what we like.

And it knows I, so I usually find them in footnotes.

The best stories in history are in the footnotes.

You and I have talked at length about this.

And this one I found, a little mention of it, a tiny little blurb on it.

And I was like, and I, my, my reaction is always the same.

Is this real?

And let's find out.

And those are the best journeys.

The best journey.

They're adventures.

That's how I see them.

And we were very lucky that there were some reporters who did a FOIA request for the documents on Richard Pavlik.

And what they found and what we got was hundreds of pages of the FBI's and the Secret Service's real-time files from 1960.

And we're very...

Who has, where are those?

How long did it take to find these?

Yeah, I mean, you know what?

The truth is, it's the one, I mean, for all the government, FOIA is an unbelievable thing.

And if no one, I wouldn't know to look for them, but once they're out, now there's a record.

So once you get Richard Pavlik, once I find that story and I get his name, now I can find his arrest record.

Now I can find who the officer is.

Now I can find, oh, it was the service or the FBI arrested him.

And you suddenly play that game through time and you start pulling these layers, and it just reveals so much, of course, about JFK and what's going on in 1960.

So why did he want to kill him?

Disgruntled postal worker.

Putting the word postal in postal worker.

You kind of have an answer.

But here's the real answer.

The real answer is because he's Catholic of all things.

And it sounds almost silly now.

He's Catholic.

This is JFK.

No, no, because I'm sorry.

I mean, because JFK's Catholic.

He wants to kill JFK's Catholic.

No, you got that.

No, no, no.

Pavlik wants to kill JFK because JFK's Catholic.

And it sounds almost trite now.

And I know it's titillating for me to come on and say, hey, we found the secret plot to kill JFK that you've never heard.

But the reason you and I love history so much is that it's not just cool old stories, but it's that it tells us something about where we are right now.

And if you look at the 1960 election, it's JFK versus Richard Nixon.

The country is bitterly divided.

The closest election of the 20th century, whatever side you're on, you think the other side are complete and utter morons.

Does that sound familiar to you?

Right?

It's right we are now.

And it sounds almost silly now, but there were Protestant leaders back then who did not want a Catholic becoming president because they were worried.

Including great statesmen like Billy Graham.

Billy Graham, the Reverend Norman Vincent Peale, who wrote The Power of Positive Thinking, one of the great books.

Vincent Peale.

He's the one who Billy Graham puts out in front of the public.

Wow.

And you see video of him saying, we can't have anyone who's Catholic.

Because what he wants, he's worried he's going to be loyal to the Pope.

You're on the money.

And they're worried that when JFK takes office, he'll be loyal to the Pope and not these United States, and he can't be trusted.

And again, it sounds almost silly now, but back then, that's what they thought.

And here was the other big part.

The KKK, very separately, the Ku Klux Klan, of course, in the Civil War, is harassing the black community.

In the 1920s, there's a resurgence of the KKK.

And they realized that they can expand their dues and their membership by expanding that circle of hate.

And what they expand it to is they start hating not just blacks, but they start hating Jews.

They start hating immigrants.

And they see JFK as an Irish Catholic immigrant, that his family came across on a boat and we can't have an immigrant reach that White House.

And when you put that venom, like what the, you know, saying you can't have a Catholic in the White House out there, people are listening.

And Richard Pavlik is listening and he's like, you know what?

I'm going to do something good for America.

I'm going to make sure the Catholic never gets to the White House.

If I'm not mistaken, it was

the Catholics were instrumental in raising money for the Washington Monument.

I think that's right.

I think that is right.

I remember reading about that.

I used to do for one of our history channel shows.

We did something.

And I think that's why it took so long to finish, not only that, but also the Civil War, because people were like, that's a Catholic project.

Of course.

I mean, a great giant monument, the Catholic.

I mean, who knows?

But, you know, we look at that as like, right now we all roll our eyes and say, why would they care about that?

But it just shows you what venom and hatred can do to our country.

And to me, you know,

I'm very much obsessed with looking at this from that perspective.

And in fact, one of the things I became obsessed with was Camelot itself.

And one of the things I learned, I love Jackie Kennedy.

Love her.

And Jackie Kennedy, we've reduced to a caricature.

We've said, oh, she's beautiful and she's got grace and she can decorate.

We don't do her a service there.

She was wicked, smart.

Wicked is the right word.

Wicked smart, like Massachusetts herself.

And she basically, we don't pull our punches.

We document JFK's affairs.

Yeah.

We show you that after they get engaged, one of JFK's best friends comes to Jackie and says, you know,

Jack really loves women.

And basically says, to her face, he's going to keep sleeping around on you.

And when she's giving birth, She hemorrhages, and they have to race her to the hospital.

JFK is nowhere to be found.

For like a week or two.

For It's a long time.

He's on a boat.

He's on a plane to Florida.

You know what would happen to me?

Wait, wait, wait.

He was on a boat with a bunch of women.

Oh, that's when she has a stillborn.

That's when he's on a boat full of women for that one.

That's a stillborn.

I didn't know that.

There's two.

That's the second.

The first one, he's on a boat with a bunch of women.

She's having a stillborn.

And they have to tell him, you should probably go back.

And he's like, you think?

And they're like, yeah, man.

You got to go back.

Your political career is finished.

She was done with a marriage on that one, right?

I mean, I think she's.

How How could you not be, right?

And

when she finally gives birth to John John, she hemorrhages because she's obviously had this previous pregnancy.

It was a disaster.

JFK's on a plane to Florida.

Do you know what would happen to me if I was on a plane to Florida while my wife was giving birth?

You and I would not be talking right now because I would be murdered.

No, me too.

Me too.

And what's happening?

I had to start my CNN show three days, two days after my daughter was born.

And I almost lost my life because I wasn't, you know,

fully there two days later.

Of course.

And what I kept saying when I'm reading all this is, why did they call this place Camelot?

How is it so great that it's Camelot?

And I was like, where does it start?

Is it year one Camelot, year two Camelot?

Where's it go?

You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck podcast.

Hear more of this interview and others with the full show podcast available wherever you get podcasts.

It's Friday, the very last broadcast

of this administration's full day.

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh.

I hadn't thought of it that way.

Yeah, yeah.

This is it.

That is incredible.

This is it.

We're through it.

We made it.

Don't you dare.

Don't you dare say something like that.

We've got a couple more days and part of another show.

Right.

Where we're still.

Yeah, we're going to be at the inauguration and covering it for you on Monday.

The live Blaze TV coverage will begin on Monday at 11, simulcast with this podcast and radio show.

So you don't want to miss it.

We have all kinds of guests and everything else and we'll be there.

By the way, Blazetv.com/slash Glenn, the code Glenn47 is a special thing they're running right for the inauguration.

So check that out, 47 bucks off.

So I want to get into what we were talking about.

I was just getting into something called the telepathy tapes that I started listening to yesterday, and I'm already eight episodes down.

Wow.

I mean, it's a rabbit hole.

But they're very careful on laying everything out so you just don't roll your eyes.

And it goes to something bigger

that Stu and I were just talking about on the air that today and Monday, I'm just not going to have the time to do justice to.

So would you write down telepathy tapes and

likable hippies

and end of an era?

She's currently writing down the words likable hippies in the room.

I hate hippies.

I hate hippies.

But there are a few non-Marxist, authentic hippies that I think I might like.

You in in theory, it's in theory.

Hippies is not, I mean, it's, they wouldn't like the word.

No, they wouldn't like the word.

But I know what you're saying.

That's what they are.

All right.

In the meantime,

there is

a documentary that is showing the real history of the California wildfires, and no major distributors would take it.

Netflix, HBO said, no, no, no, no, we can't do that.

The documentary is called Hot Shot.

The director and cinematographer is Gabriel Kirpatrick Mann, and he's on with us now.

Gabriel, how are you, sir?

I'm fabulous, Ben.

Thank you so much for having me on.

I love the fact that

HBO, Netflix, everybody said, no, you're not talking enough about climate change, right?

Oh, yeah.

And look, it's been a surreal experience.

You know this well enough.

Hollywood has been entirely captured by awokeness.

And I think this is why they keep recycling the same garbage that nobody likes.

So I made this film in a very unconventional way.

I just spent six years just walking into these wildfires with a couple of cameras and I embed it directly with the hotshot crews to get their point of view.

And look, the visuals are insane.

And I think that's what got us in the door with Netflix and HBO.

But in the film, we gloss over the climate change thing and say, look, we've had horrible fires for centuries.

Yes.

And the worst ones were actually way back in 1871 during, you know, the optimal climate.

So obviously your SUV doesn't matter.

And because we didn't sufficiently mess our drawers about climate change, they balked at it and they wanted us to recut the whole film to be more about climate change.

But I'm not going to lie.

So I refused to cut it.

They told me to kick rocks.

So I just made a template website, released it myself.

And it's been entirely a grassroots effort.

And look, it's insanely difficult when you're competing against these massive studios.

The film, it's actually become the number one rated firefighter film of all time.

Backdraft.

Backdraft.

That's that's an amazing movie

but it just shows you how self-destructive this woke epidemic is for hollywood they're shooting themselves in the foot like how do you turn down a profitable film just because you're mad that it didn't sufficiently validate your dogmatic ideology it's crazy so you know it's uh yesterday did you hear this due donald trump said jon voigt uh Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson are now special envoys for the president to try to fix Hollywood.

And I'm like, I don't know how you could fix Hollywood.

I think it's being fixed on its own because

they're going to end in a giant ball of fire like California is.

You can't keep up this kind of policy that is

completely unhooked from common sense and reality and expect to succeed in anything, in any way.

100% right.

And frankly, I think there is a massively underserved market of people.

Oh, yeah.

They don't even need, they don't need right-wing movies to balance out the commie movies.

They just want good movies back.

Just don't lecture me.

Just give me 90s Hollywood when we had Jurassic Park and Saving Private Ryan and all these good flicks with no agenda.

Like that's what we were aiming to do, just to try to inform honestly and trust that our audience is smart enough to come up with their own conclusions and let them enjoy the picture on their own.

I think the rational wing of America is responding very positively to that.

And I think if more filmmakers go that route, they can have success outside of the system.

So one of the things that's in Hotshot, the movie that you've released online,

is the difference between California and Florida.

And Florida has very few forest fires.

It's hot there, too.

What's the difference?

Well, not only is it hot there, but all that rain just creates more fuels.

Florida is very flammable.

But back

in the late 1990s, they had a huge wildfire outbreak, destroyed a bunch of homes, destroyed the timber industry, and it cost them a fortune.

So they made a very rational conclusion.

How much did 500,000 acres of wildfire cost us?

And how much would it cost us to proactively burn that with prescribed fire?

And what they found out is that that one wildfire outbreak, they could have afforded to do 60 years of prescribed fire.

Oh my gosh.

And so they just decided, okay, we're going to do that.

And every year, they proactively burn 2 million acres every single year.

In one year, Florida proactively burns more than California has burned in the last 50 years they need to burn between four to eleven million acres every year just to keep up with that growth that keeps coming out of the ground they're only doing like 36 000 a year and five four years ago five years ago now gavin newsom stepped over burnt corpses on sacred tribal land to promise that he was going to burn a million acres a year he still hasn't come remotely close to doing it everyone focuses on how the government let people down during the firefight i can tell you once fire's on the ground with conditions like that there's nothing you can do.

The real betrayal came, you know, in the last years and months when they refused to get rid of these fuels.

You know, it's just common sense.

And it also, fires renew the soil.

It makes

the new growth stronger.

It is so natural to do it.

And I don't understand why

the powers to be and the so-called

land scientists and everything else, how they don't understand that.

I'm an alcoholic DJ and

I've known that my whole life.

Well, look, in order to fix a problem, you have to first accept that you have agency over the problem.

And they refuse to do that, except in this like really convoluted Rube Goldberg climate change kind of way, where they think if you just add more solar panels or buy more Teslas, that the weather will change and then the fires will stop.

But look, no amount of Teslas is going to make the weather less angry.

You just need to accept it and clear your brush.

What's double frustrating is these things aren't mutually exclusive.

You don't even have to abandon the climate change fantasy.

You just have to accept that none of the climate policies will do a darn thing for wildfires.

Not one, like ever, but you can prevent tomorrow's wildfire right now.

And like you said, not only do the fires replenish the soil, look, the ecosystem out west is dependent on fire.

A lot of trees cannot even reproduce unless the pine cone burns to release and germinate the seed.

So to try to defy this natural process is insanity.

Let me ask you,

California, where are you from, Gabriel?

I was born and raised in Los Angeles.

Palisades, actually, specifically.

Wow.

So I get this question all the time.

Do you think California is going to wake up and learn their lesson?

Do you think they learned their lesson?

I don't know.

Do they?

No, never.

Dan Bongino always asked this, like, is it bad enough yet?

It's not bad enough yet.

And, you know, I love Adam Carolla's rant the other day, but nothing's going to change.

Like if I thought they were capable of changing, I wouldn't have left the state for Tennessee.

But nothing changed after 85 people were killed in paradise.

Sean Penn lost his Malibu mansion to a fire in 1993, then rebuilt it, nearly lost it again in another fire in 2018.

And all he does is blame you for the car that you drive.

So look, I don't think it's going to change because, like I said, you have to accept that you have agency over the problem.

If you keep putting it on climate, it's the most disempowering narrative you could possibly have because it creates this learned helplessness because nothing is going to change.

So, look, man, I don't know how you can expect anyone to make a real change if they refuse to accept the real world.

Let me play some of the

clips from the movie.

Clip three from Hot Shot cut number six.

Even though their fire season is only June to November, she has to train all year to stay in shape.

There are no bonus points for abs.

It's a different kind of fitness.

Justine doesn't have any illusions about the female's physicality.

She has to put in extra work to keep up with the fellas.

This is real life, not a gender studies class.

If you can't get up the hill, you die.

If you can't drive the buggy through the fire when it goes sideways, your whole crew dies.

You gotta be durable.

And as a squad boss, she's overhead.

And she has to earn their trust and respect.

The only way to do that is to outwork them.

And what's more humbling than having a girl pass you on the hill?

I have to tell you, they had to have gone crazy on things like that, but that's the truth.

They lost their mind over that one.

That actually may have doomed us more than the climate thing.

Because, look, I'm just, dude, it's just reality.

Like, those of us who live in reality accept the simple truth that, look, if you're 120 pounds and your pack weighs 70 pounds, you got to work three times as hard as someone like me.

I weigh 230 pounds.

It's just reality.

And the thing is, I would think that framing it that way, saying that a gal has to work three times harder,

that honors their service.

But they look at it as like, oh, no, no, no, no, everyone can do the same thing.

So if you're saying she has to work three times as hard, then that means you're demeaning women.

It's like, no, it's the opposite.

That's how upside down Woke Hollywood is.

It's like, we really need to, everyone in my industry needs to disabuse ourselves of all this like delicate political stuff because normal people watch that clip in particular and just go, yeah, yeah, that sounds right.

And that is the reality.

Where can you find it now?

Can I just

support us?

Go ahead.

Yeah,

we made a website called hotshotmovie.com.

You can support us directly there.

But

if it's more convenient, you don't mind giving Jeff Bezos a pound of flesh.

It's also on Amazon.

Google Play and voodoo.

Well, he's losing so much money with the Washington Post that maybe, I don't know, maybe you should throw him a bone.

I don't know.

i think i would go to hotshot movie.com thank you so much gabriel i appreciate it god bless

thank you so much you bet

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