Podcaster Tim Dillon criticizes California’s response to the LA fires

Based in Los Angeles comedian and podcaster, Tim Dillon, tore into the government’s handling of wildfires on Monday’s episode of “The Tim Dillon Show.”

“Whole parts of the city were gone. There was no water in the fucking hydrants. Nobody cleared any of this brush, they didn’t do any controlled burns, they didn’t prepare any of these areas,” Dillon says, adding that those measures were ignored because “we didn’t want to disturb fish”.

President-elect Donald Trump caused a firestorm last week when he called out California Gov. Gavin Newsom for choosing to “protect an essentially worthless fish,” instead of the water needs of Californians. It wasn’t the first time Trump had called out Newsom on the issue, criticizing Newsom ahead of the 2024 election during an interview with Joe Rogan in October.

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“I was inside [California] farm country with some congressmen,” Trump told Rogan. “We’re driving down the highway and I’m like, ‘How come all this land is so barren?’ It’s farmland and it looked awful. It was just brown and bad. I said, ‘But there’s always that little corner that’s so green and beautiful.’ They said, ‘We have no water.’ I said, ‘Do you have a drought?’ ‘No, we don’t have a drought,’ he recalled.

Trump continued: “I said, ‘Why don’t you [any] water?’ Because the water must not flow down. And in order to protect the little fish, the water in the north is directed into the Pacific Ocean. Millions and millions of gallons of water are spilling.”

The governor’s press office said in response to Trump’s accusations that he was dead wrong, arguing that the president-elect is “conflating two completely unrelated things: the transfer of water to Southern California and the supply from local storage.”

“Generally speaking, there is no shortage of water Southern California right now, despite Trump’s claims that he would open some imaginary port,” Newsom’s office added.[The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power] he said because of the high demand for water, pumping stations at lower elevations did not have enough tanks to fill under pressure at higher elevations, and the ongoing fire prevented crews from accessing the pumps. In addition, they used water tenders to supply water – a common tactic in wildland firefighting.”

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Dillon also expressed his frustration with California’s leadership, saying, “You go to bed thinking somebody’s in charge. Nobody’s in charge. Nobody’s in charge. That’s the thing.”

He added that “the only people who seem to have any kind of clue seem to be actively working against the public interest all the time in any way. The only people who seem to have any power in this society are actively creating your By the way, long live all harder and more dangerous, only people who have any authority or control are constantly doing horrible things that you can’t do anything about.”

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We’re talking about being confused by the people who still support you Governor Newsom after the fires failed to contain, Dillon asked, “what cult are you in, why are you in it, who put you in it, what’s in it for you?”

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Later in the podcast, Dillon continued to criticize the California government’s preparedness, saying, “You can’t have people running around psychotic setting things on fire” and that “you can’t be without any preparation.”

“We’ve let people run this city with crazy ideas that sound good to a 19-year-old on Twitter. We need to run this city with real operators who can get things done,” he said.

Fox News Digital’s Alec Schemmel contributed to this report.