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- [00:00]
Kristi Noem
Extreme cold weather advisory in effect this morning.
- [00:02]
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- [00:05]
JVL
All right guys, come on, let's do this.
- [00:06]
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- [00:30]
JVL
Hello everyone. This is JVL here with my best friend Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark. Sarah, last Friday we had a flash flood in Texas. Absolutely horrifying. The waters rose 23ft in an hour in the early morning hours. As of right now, when we're sitting down to talk, 120 people dead, 173 still missing. Unbelievable tragedy.
- [01:00]
Kristi Noem
And many of them were children attending camp.
- [01:04]
JVL
Yeah.
- [01:05]
Kristi Noem
And I think for us with like camp age kids, like the thought of a, as a parent of sending your kids to camp and this happening, it's just like, it's too gut wrenching for words.
- [01:20]
JVL
It's bad. And there is, I want to try to not be super political but to talk really about like government functioning because the, the thing which has happened in the aftermath of this and this is always like, look, you know, the government can't stop floodwaters from rising. The government's job is then to, to come in and try to save as many people as possible when something like this happens, to render assistance, et cetera, et cetera. And the response from FEMA has been quite inadequate. And the reason I want to talk about that with you is because FEMA seems to have done a very bad job here and then has insisted that actually it did a great job, but also it shouldn't be doing any jobs and that the long term goal is to get rid of fema. Totally. And this is the sort of insane backwards logic that has gotten us to like no longer having usaid, you know, and, and so that's why I want to talk about again, unbelievable tragedy. This isn't really about scoring political points, about talking about what is the proper rule of government. So what happened is that early in her tenure, Kristi Noem issued a directive that anything costing more than $100,000 can't be executed by anybody further down the food chain within DHS than her. And anything at $100,000 price point and over, she has to personally sign off on $100,000 is nothing when it comes to something like disaster relief because you're talking about renting equipment, you're talking about moving in personnel. You know, $100,000 is like table stakes for anything you need to do. And the way things happened by Monday night, again, this all happened Friday morning. Monday night, only 86 FEMA staffers had been deployed to the area. And CNN has a big story on with a bunch of people from FEMA talking to them on background, enumerating the things which didn't get done in a timely manner because they were waiting on like sending the proposal up the bureaucratic chain, getting it before Christy Noem, getting her to sign off on it and then executing and I don't know, man. I mean, this does not seem like any way to run a railroad.
- [03:49]
Kristi Noem
Well, so let me just, let me add a couple of other details that I think has been in the reporting, which is so. And I think in the, if you were listening to DHS make their excuses, one of the things they would say is, no, we were contracting with lots of people on the ground. It's not just fema, like the federal, it's not just the feds that come in. There's all these people on the ground. And there was already sort of a pre approved bucket of money that was allowing for things to happen on the ground. Like there was a response. I don't think anybody's saying that like it was a disaster in terms of the responsiveness there. What happened was there was pre approved money. And so things were actually people were getting in there. The local people were doing their job. The problem was is that once the initial kind of tranche that was already approved was depleted, then they were starting to be like, and now we've got to keep doing more. Right? It's not just what happens in the first 48 hours. Like so many people are still missing. We're trying to get our arms around it. And that's when they started to have to get approvals for a lot more things that then ground to a halt because, and this is where you can sort of see how this happens with these Trump folks, because it's not unlike Doge. It's a bunch of people who say, boy, I have no idea how government works, but I have been railing against government for so long that I, I'm sure I know how to fix it. You know, how we're going to stop waste, fraud and abuse. I, Kristi Noem, in between sending people erroneously to languish in foreign prisons and doing photo ops where I Cosplay, different law enforcement types in between that I need to sign off on every hundred thousand dollars that's deployed. Well, of course that grinds things to a halt, right? But you can see how in their own minds, what they tell themselves is like, well, this is, this is good. This is what fiscal stewardship looks like. And there's actually a reason why nobody does it this way. Like, there were reasons why the government operated the way that it did. And I'm sure you guys who love being an opposition party and have no idea how to be a governing party were, you know, love to, to throw rocks from the outside. But when it's on you, right, when you are in charge and you're making these kinds of decisions, they have real life consequences. And so, you know, I watched Kristi Noem. She went on Fox News to be like, this is fake news. And she said something that really jumped out at me. She said, it's a real disservice to the country because people start to mistrust anything that comes out then over the news. And you're like, oh, oh, are we all supposed to trust government now? Are we supposed to trust the news now? I'm sorry, who was it that told us all that everything was fake news? Who told us that the government couldn't do anything, shouldn't do anything? And so this is, you know, this idea of like, there's politicizing tr. Tragedies and, and then there's the political side of the tragedies, which is like, how do we govern? How do we get better? How do we make sure we're taking care of people properly? How are we deploying resources? And it's not political to say, or it's not politicizing the tragedy. Like I think it was widely, it was widely believed that George W. Bush and the Bush administration messed up when it came to Katrina. Right? Like they did not get things going fast enough. It was a massive failure of federal help. There were also, you know, a lot of failures on the ground. And rather that like a big part of the criticism was Bush, rather than saying this is going wrong, he did like heck of a job, Brownie. And, and I think that it is not politicizing a tragedy to evaluate and look for accountability in how the American government handles tragedy, which is what this is.
- [07:55]
JVL
Yeah, I want to put some meat on the bone here. I'm just going to read from the CNN story. As Central Texas towns were submerged in rising waters, FEMA officials realized they couldn't pre position urban search and rescue crews. From a network of teams stationed regionally across the country. In the past, female FEMA would have swiftly staged these teams, which are specifically trained for situations, including catastrophic floods, closer to a disaster zone, in anticipation of urgent requests, multiple agency sources told cnn. But even as Texas rescue crews raced to save lives, FEMA officials realized that they needed Nome's approval before sending those additional assets. Nome didn't authorize FEMA's deployment of urban search and rescue teams until Monday, more than 72 hours after the flooding began, multiple sources told CNN. Texas did request aerial imagery from FEMA to aid search and rescue operations, a source told cnn, but that was delayed as it awaited Nome's approval for the necessary contract. FEMA staff have also been answering phones at Disaster Call center, where, according to one agency official, callers have faced longer wait times as the agency awaited nome's approval for a contract to bring in additional support staff. And so this is what, what it gets to. And, and all of this. Then we've been in this bizarre place where Kristi Noem is at once saying, everything went great. We did exactly what we should have. And then on Wednesday, she was saying that we as the federal government don't manage these disasters, the state does. And she's calling on FEMA to be phased out. And so this is, again, it's, it's like they walk up with a hammer and they break the thing and then they say, see, it doesn't work. We have to get rid of it. And that again, disasters like this are acts of God. Like, you know, what we're talking about is not, not causing it, but responding to it in a way that helps save lives. And I just, I don't know, Sarah. Like, are people going to look at this and say, hold on, the government didn't do its job? And it says the answer is that the government shouldn't have to do that job. Like, that doesn't make any. That is fully Elon Musk thinking, that is, we'll just turn everything off and see what breaks.
- [10:17]
Kristi Noem
This is a tough one. You know, I was thinking about it in relationship to Katrina and how the thing that happened for Katrina was the images, the ability to sort of visually see the pain that people are in. Like, I, I can remember the actual, like probably the AP photo, but what are the Getty image. But I remember the image of when they were all in the stadium.
- [10:44]
JVL
In the Superdome. Yep. In the Superdome. Yep. 100.
- [10:47]
Kristi Noem
Because remember, people jumped and like, it was this horrible failure of government for everybody to see and you could see the people and the kids and the people packed in and, and they're not bathrooms. And it was just. It was. You wanted to physically go down there yourself. Right. I do think that. And this is just a stupid function of the medium or, or like the way we interpret things now is this isn't having quite that same. It's you. The victims are missing. And it's not that we're seeing the constant evidence of where the failure is. And so it requires the reports on the ground. And I think until we get something that absorbs the public, right where you're sitting there saying, what are we doing about people who are trapped? I mean, I remember, like, remember people sitting on roofs and like the, like that. That. That was just. It conjured a different sense of. And also it was like, why isn't someone helping them? Like, what are people doing?
- [11:58]
JVL
We did. Had Covid and, you know, people cared sort of, but not, not all that much. They didn't. They didn't blame the Trump administration all that much. I just. I don't know. I. I guess I am. If, if you want to make the case that people have to be able to see something to understand that it's bad, maybe that's the reality. I don't know. I don't know. More measles cases in America than ever since measles eradicated.
- [12:24]
Kristi Noem
That case was just so you could. It was easy to see who was failing and how. Whereas, like you said, most people saw this act of God. And now I think the question is, is will people on the ground. And this is maybe the first sense that we've had of this, the CNN report. Will they start saying the federal government is leaving us behind? Like that is what it will take. It will take people who are there telling their stories and saying, where is everybody? And having that be something that gets out there.
- [12:59]
JVL
Well, we need. We need that to happen because right now, I mean, what's going on is a fundamental reorganization of American government. And that fundamental reorganization is away from doing things like probably promoting vaccines, which is why we have more measles cases in this year than in history since the disease was eradicated. It's why we have disasters like this followed by the Secretary of Homeland Security calling on FEMA to be phased out disappeared. And why we then have vast new powers and huge budgetary infusions into ICE in cpb. Right. I mean, the government is being reimagined as a thing which needs a vast national secret police force to arrest and detain people. But shouldn't be responding to floods. And if, if voters can't look at that and understand what's having on what's going on in the abstract, like, they need to see pictures of it, then, like, I don't know, man. Like, what are we.
- [14:06]
Kristi Noem
Hold on. I think, you know, you're just, I think you're looking for a reason to, like, blame voters, which again.
- [14:15]
JVL
Not yet.
- [14:16]
Kristi Noem
I think, I think what the bigger thing, the bigger story here is that there is a crisis of competency in the Trump administration. There's an overall crisis of competency. We're seeing this with Pete Hegseth not telling the White House that they're stopping, they're pausing aid to Ukraine. We see it with the Justice Department. And, and part of it is, and this is where, like, I think you can make this matter. But what you have to really help people understand is this is not America First. You are spending more time and more money and more focus, specifically you, Kristi Noem, on deporting people who don't need to be deported. Who, like, not the gang members. Right. You are erroneously falsely sending people. Where, where is Andre? Where is the gay makeup artist you guys sent? They are incompetent across the board. And it extends then to their ability to respond to crises. And so it is like, like what's happening effectively. And so it's, I think it's hard for, look, it's hard for us to know how much failure is happening as a result of their incompetence right now. What I do know is I do not need to give them the benefit of the doubt. And if people on background from FEMA are telling reporters we are not getting what we need, they're doing that as a cry for help. They're actually not doing it because they want to make Kristi Noem look bad. They're not doing it to politicize things. They're doing it because they're trying to get movement to happen. And so I think that our job is to amplify that cry for help and to put pressure on Kristi Noem to do her real job, which is to keep Americans safe.
- [16:11]
JVL
All very well said, best friend. Be nice if we could have fun shows where we talk about, like, neo Nazi AIs and stuff. This stuff is.
- [16:21]
Kristi Noem
We can do that, too.
- [16:22]
JVL
This stuff is tough.
- [16:22]
Kristi Noem
We can do that, too. We can walk and chew gum.
- [16:26]
JVL
Good luck, America.