Former L.A. Mayoral candidate Rick Caruso appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher on Friday to warn the city to be smart about rebuilding after the disastrous wildfires, and noted that Donald Trump was correct when he criticized officials for their lack of dead brush removal policies.
Caruso, who ran as a Republican but lost his campaign for mayor to Democrat mayor Karen Bass, told Maher that city hall completely failed to put in place the proper prevention plans ahead of the wildfires that destroyed wide swaths of the Pacific Palisades neighborhoods this month. He accused city officials of being “border negligent” for that failure.
“We had a fire three weeks ago in Malibu, six years ago we had a fire in Brentwood,” Caruso said noting that Brentwood is only 15 minutes from where the Palisades fires.
He added, “There’s 40-year-old vegetation between Brentwood and the Palisades and at that time I said if that fire travels it’s going to come through and wipe out the Palisades. I’m so sad that I was right.”
“It was predictable, Bill,” he lamented. “What’s predictable is preventable. And then, on top of it, to have a main reservoir out of service during Peak fire season? I mean that’s border negligence.”
Caruso went on to say that running a city is not much different than running a company “for the benefit of the residents,” and noted that better decisions need to be made in city hall.
Maher jumped in and pointed out that when Trump was president and he visited California after wildfires hit, Trump warned that dead brush needs to be “raked.” Maher joked that Trump said, “You don’t rake. You’re not, you’re not raking.” He also said that plenty of people made fun of Trump, but he had a point.
“I remember when he took Ivermectin, or something, and then Ivermectin — which won the Nobel Prize– and it was like that became snake oil? Just because Trump says it doesn’t mean it’s automatically wrong,” Maher said.
Caruso agreed that Donald Trump issued the right warning about the lack of effective dead brush removal policies in California. The former Republican mayoral candidate also noted that power lines should be buried to prevent sparking wildfires.
“Yes we need to rebuild quickly and yes we need to get people back in their homes,” Caruso told Maher. “But we also need to be smart about it because the Palisades, just like Altadena — and God bless the families there, too — the Palisades is going to remain in a fire zone, so don’t go build the same damn thing.”
Maher closed out the discussion about the wildfires by pointing out that the city of Sacramento started putting herds of goats in wild growth areas to help reduce the amount of vegetation that feeds wildfires.
“You know what they did in Sacramento? Goats. Yeah man, fucking goats. You put them on the hillside and they eat the vegetation. And they’re cheap, they work cheap,” he said.
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