MAGA Blames Everything But Climate Change For Deadly California Fires

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Conservatives (and even some Democrats) are throwing around a lot of blame about the deadly fires in California that erupted this week, but so far the major culprit is missing from most conversations: Climate Change. You can NOT address the cause of the fires without addressing the climate crisis that we are facing, but conservatives would rather blame Democrats, DEI, and even fish for the fires. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains what’s happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

The deadly wildfires in California are still raging as of this recording. They are 0% contained folks. And because of the damage, because of the deaths, because of the devastation that we are seeing in California right now, the blame is flying except towards climate change, of course, right? No conservatives are out there blaming democratic governors, democratic mayors. They're blaming fish as Donald Trump has done. They're blaming DEI for the lack of firefighters in the area. They're blaming everything other than climate change. And another group, by the way, that is escaping any kind of scrutiny right now, is Nestle more on that in just a minute. But let me read you some of this. This comes from, uh, Sarah Ano, a disinformation analyst at the Anti-Defamation League Center on extremism. She posted this on blue sky, much like the discourse that followed the fires in Canada and Hawaii in recent years.

Conspiracy theorists are blaming the California fires on DEI, homelessness, anti whiteness and weather modification. Conspiracy theorists always recycle. And the internet always rewards journalist. Uh, Washa Ali posted conservatives and Donald Trump Jr. Out here blaming the devastating fires on DEI, not climate change or other environmental factors. Nope, DEI, they never miss an opportunity to be hateful. Journalist Judd Legum posted on Blue Sky. Whenever there is a tragedy, you can count on Musk to argue that the root of the problem is not enough. White people are in charge. Jasmine Crockett got into it with a conservative commentator on CNN saying quote, I am so tired. And the fact that people actually decide that they want to engage in public service, whether it's sitting in Congress or whether it's serving on the fire department or the police department, should not be an issue. The fact is, stop trying to act as if only white men are the ones that are capable.

Because right now you're sitting at a table with three very capable black women. Public citizen also fired back at the, uh, conspiracy theorists on social media saying quote, climate change is making natural disasters like wildfires, worse and more frequent. Full stop. But the far right doesn't like facts, so they'll blame everything else, even DEI in Ukraine. Instead, they'll keep letting big oil kill the planet and find a new scapegoat. Donald Trump himself has of course blamed Gavin, new scum as he calls him. He's blamed the fish. You know, we're trying to protect the fish so we can't use the water because the fish live in the water. Here's the thing, there is a lot of blame to go around, even beyond climate change and

Nestle. Uh, we do have, the city of LA has of course reduced the budget for the firefighters. They have a massive backlog of people wanting to be firefighters, but they haven't been able to hire 'em because they don't have the money. But there's actually not a lack of people on the ground fighting the fires. And it's not that there are necessarily water shortages either to contradict what some folks are saying. Here's the thing. They got prisoners out there, prisoners that are making maybe $6 per day fighting the fires, which is typically what the state of California does when they have wildfires. Even if you had this whole backlog of people wanting to be firefighters hired, you still wouldn't have enough people. So they always turn to the prison and turn those people essentially into slave labor for six to $10 per day, not per hour per day, putting their lives in danger, forcing them to do it essentially for almost no money at all.