Piers Morgan Uncensored - Dennis Quaid and Patrick Bet-David Discuss LA Wildfires

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

The massive wildfires burning in Los Angeles show no signs of slowing and now, a palpable fear of the famous Santa Ana winds fanning the flames can be felt amongst those on the ground. To say many are angry at the democrat-controlled city government would be an understatement. Additionally, fire insurance is now at the forefront of every LA resident’s mind. Piers Morgan speaks to insurance mogul Patrick Bet-David about the business and political ramifications of the disaster before discussing the disaster with Hollywood actor Dennis Quaid about losing his home, the anger he and his neighbours feel, and how he now feels about Donald Trump. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

$150 billion of damages. Think about the memories. It all rises and falls on leadership. This was a catastrophic moment in his career. And now people are sitting there worried and saying, are we ready if an earthquake happens? How much do you blame Gavin Newsom for this? This is what happens with the woke philosophy

that we've been living under, the social experiment. I honestly don't care if you're straight, gay, lesbian. I have no interest in any of that stuff. But if we're hiring you and you're talking about you want to increase diversity, that's not your job. Your job is to protect the families in the state of California. Who would you rather rebuild the palisades? Mayor Bass or Rick Caruso. Yeah.

I think it's that important to not wait for the next election, to have a recall. This is not about Republican or Democrat. Fire is an animal. And how many people do you know personally who've lost their homes? At least 100. Wow. The harrowing images of the LA wildfires are shocked viewers across the world. Huge sways of a city known globally for its glamour have been incinerated.

The rebuild could cost upwards of $150 billion. And that, of course, is for those who survive. California's governance is now facing intense scrutiny with claims of a Democrat leadership that puts vanity and virtue above value. The insurance industry is also under attack. Governor Newsom says the state will ban insurance companies from cancelling coverage for the fires victims of the next year, but thousands of policies in the worst affected areas were cancelled

three months before these wildfires began. Value Tame and CEO, Patrick Bed David, is a unique vantage point. He's one of the many entrepreneurs and influences who've abandoned California. He's also an insurance mogul, and he joins me now. Patrick, great to see you and happy new year to you. Great to see you as well, happy new to you as well. Yeah, good to see you.

What's your reaction, just in an overall, take on what's happened here in LA? Well, I mean, if you go think about the amount of experience that the governor, the leader at the top of California has had, he's been the governor since 2019, he was the lieutenant governor since 2011, which means from 2011 till 2025, he's at experience of direct influence to do something about the continuous fires that happens in California. And what have they done?

I don't know. But the reality of it right now is when you say $150 billion of damages, think about the memories, all those homes of people living there with their kids being raised or some of these homes that were passed on to their kids and their crank kids in some areas like Palisades, which is a community. People who live there don't ever want to leave there. They want their kids to be raised there. It all rises and falls on leadership. This was a catastrophic moment in his career. And now people are sitting there worried and saying, are we ready if an earthquake happens? I lived in California for 24 years.

I wasn't when the big Northridge earthquake happened. I was in Van Nuys when the earthquake happened. It lasted almost 45 seconds. And so what are they going to do if that takes place? What happens with the next crisis? I'm a little bit concerned just like everybody else that's living in California right now. Yeah, I mean, look, I've got a house in Beverly Hills,

and the next two days are going to be tricky, you know, because the winds are getting up again. No one's quite sure what they're going to do. And the Palisades fire, in particular, it's edging right up to the 404. who knows what could happen. You know, so these are worrying times to everybody who's got homes there.

I know so many people, as I'm sure you do, who've either lost homes or no people you have. Terrible. Yeah, so if you think about things that are predictable, unpredictable, crises, right? If you're a military leader, your job is to sit there and say,

what are some predictable attacks that we could get from the enemy? Yeah. Well, it's from that flank, from that mountain, from this, from that, whatever. Okay, great. So you write down the predictable attacks. Then the unpredictable attacks, some things that maybe come from behind us,

maybe on the inside, maybe you turn one of our main guys against us. Maybe you get a spy to come in. Maybe it's a late at night while we're asleep. Your job is to think about predictable attacks and unpredictable attacks, right? In every business and every job, leaders are supposed to think that way. So let's look at Florida. Okay, the great state of Florida, which I reside in right now, I lived five years in Texas, and I've been four years now in Florida.

In Texas, the weather gets cold. So when it does get cold, pipes explode. And when it does explode, you could go a week or two weeks without any power, water. It can be a very bad situation. Tornadoes can hit, and that's mother nature. That's not an attack someone's hitting you. If you go to Florida, we have hurricanes. Tampa got hit twice in a span of nine days,

and you watch the speed of reaction of the leader at the top of someone like DeSantis. Something happens. Bridge is destroyed. You read about it. In three days, it is rebuilt. That is a sign of a leader. A lot of the stuff that happens in the state of Florida, it's unpredictable when the hurricane hits. You can't sit there and say, well, there's a hurricane that's coming up and here's what we need to do.

No, you don't get to decide that it's just every year, September, October, November. It's the prime season hurricane that takes place. Go to California. how long has California been having fires? I can't tell you how many times when I drive up 405, you're like, oh, it's all black. What does that mean? We just overcame a fire.

I've driven through 405 where there's fire. And you're thinking to yourself, you're going up to the valley this way. I'm going north, and you look behind you, you see the water. So the ocean is this way. You're going to the valley, beautiful area when it's green. It just looks like out of a movie how beautiful it is. if you know a part of this is predictable

where 95% of the fires in the state of California are manmade. Let me say that one more time. 95% of the fires, this is according to PBS when they had a study done and they reported on it. 95% is based on somebody does something with it, right? It isn't that is a, you know, mother nature.

Now, don't get me wrong. The wind, 70 mile an hour winds, Of course, you can't control that. That's the other side. You got to be thinking about what you can do on the unpredictable side. One, what do we do with the fine? What do we do with the people that do this that get caught? What do we do with getting everybody involved?

There's a video that went viral where somebody is catching another guy was trying to get a place to be on fire. He's cornering him, getting everybody to be behind it. Can we create an example of somebody? An example's got to be made to say, if you get caught doing X, Y, Z, this is the sentence that you're going to get. And we're not forgiving this. $150 billion, you've got to make an example of somebody.

That's number one. Then on the other side is when you're living in the state of California, if you and I were to say the profile of a startup entrepreneur that builds a billion-dollar company from zero to a billion, that's a very hard thing to do. But if we were to say, where is the capital in America that has the most people that are professional problem solvers. These are engineers that they sit in a room.

They grab a marker and they say, hey, Pierce, let's start a business. Let's think about all these industries. Automotive, technology, retail, fast food. Here's a problem. How do we solve it? What if we do this? Great. Let's go build it. Let's go over $100 million.

Sequoia Capital. Now we got a billion-A company. Why not get those people in the room and get them involved to say, hey, guys, you guys are problem-solvers. Get 20 of them. What can we do to address this? and show them, do what Trump does. Trump's having meetings at Marlago.

Who has he had meetings with? I don't see any pictures of Newsom sitting down with other people. Why don't you replicate what Trump is doing? Newsom, first Trump gets Trudeau comes in, Bezos comes, and Zuck comes, and Musk comes, and every one of the problem solvers going to Marlago. What is Newsom doing? Is he following his lead? Why don't you show us some videos with some of the brightest minds in California

sitting down with you instead of just giving us lip service? I'm talking to everybody. I'm talking to local leaders. I'm talking to business owners. Show it to us. Document us. Tell us what you're doing because you have access to those resources, but unfortunately, he's just not using it. You tweeted on January 9th, fire every one of these overpaid DEI hires ASAP. One was the LA Department of Water and Power CEO, Christina Crowley, the first LGBTQ fire chief. Christina Kepner, the first lesbian assistant chief, LAFD.

Christine Larson, LASD's first black lesbian equity. Bureau Chief. Now, when you lay it out like that, it looks like DEI gone nuts. I have to say in her defense that Christina Crowley, I think, has actually performed quite well. I'd be more impressed by her

than I certainly have by Newsom or by Karen Bass. I mean, now you've had a few days to watch her. Would you agree with that? Or do you still think that these were all hires because of a mindset? When you get hired and then you say, I can't tell you what percentage it is for me to increase the DEI levels of hires,

of firefighters to be women, because I think it's too low right now. You don't make any sense to me. That you lose credibility when you speak that language. The language of somebody you hire as an executive, and I've hired many, where you're paying them a multi, multi, multi, six-figure salary to solve a problem. I'm not expecting that person to come and tell me and say, I'm going to hire more white male than ever before. I'm going to hire more people from Jersey than ever before.

I'm going to hire more female than ever before. An investor, CEO, is going to sit there and say, I'm sorry, I don't care where they're from, just get somebody that can do the job the right way. Leadership isn't about what skin color you hire. I don't care if you're black, white, Asian, 29, 68, 53, eight-year degree, four-year degree. Do you get the job done on a timely manner, extremely urgent and are you somebody that's anticipating the future crisis from taking place

and you're getting ahead of it with 5, 10, 15 ways of looking at saying, if this happens, we're going to do this. If this happens, we're going to do this. We have this ready for this. We're using these resources for this. We're producing these cameras because out of the last 200 fires that were started, 68% of them were started here. So we're spending $800 million of putting camera in these areas to see the movements of the fire getting started, to be able to prompt and give us an alert. Give me some of those things as a problem solver. If you're doing that, I honestly don't care if you're straight, gay, lesbian, I have no interest in any of that stuff. But if we're hiring you and you're talking about you want to increase diversity, that's not your job.

Your job is to protect the families in the state of California in L.A., minimize these fires, and quite frankly, they failed royally peers. What's going to happen, Patrick? I mean, you're the best person to ask about this, the insurance element of this. We know that insurance companies began removing cover for a lot of people before these fires, because they said that their companies would simply not be viable if they didn't. We obviously know that after all this, two things are going to happen. One is that premiums are going to go through the roof for everyone who's got an existing fire policy. But secondly, I would imagine that the insurance companies in relation to fire cover in LA,

they're all going to run a mile, aren't they? I mean, if they were already doing that before this, Who's going to want to insure anyone against fire in Los Angeles? And even if they do, who can afford it? You know, it's interesting. When we started, you said something at the beginning. You said California is preventing insurance companies from banning, you know, from canceling their insurance protection in the state of California.

Fortune's article says California bans insurance cancellation in L.A. Fire-affected areas. You don't get to determine that. That's not how business works. There's the right to represent customers that you want. You ever gone to a restaurant and it says, we have the right to refuse? We have the right to refuse.

You have the right to refuse. Yeah, you could be offended by it, but you have the right to refuse. Let me give you an interesting story. I bought a boat here in Florida four years ago. My insurance company, Chubb, said, you need to have a captain on it because you're not a captain. You've never had a boat before this size.

I said, no problem. One day my captain's not available. I decide to take the boat out myself. Would you like me to take a boat out where you're insuring, and if I crash it, would you like to protect that boat, knowing a person who is not a qualified captain is willing to go out there? Would you like to put that risk on the captain itself, myself, without any insurance? Pierce, what would you and I do with somebody like that?

Right. You wouldn't insure them. Guess what happened two days later? I got a letter from Chubb with my picture on it. saying, we noticed, you posted this, and there was no captain there. Because of that were dropping your insurance policy. Wow. And it was an Instagram video that they showed proof, and they were right.

I lost my policy with Chup. You know what happened when they did that? I wasn't offended by. They're right. I wouldn't want to do that. Yeah. I've been to the insurance industry now for almost 25 years, and I'll never forget when my agents would come up to me with one of their relatives,

and they would say, well, yes, this person's 280 pounds and 5'3. But everybody needs life insurance. Why wasn't AIG or whatever the company, you're proven this person? I said, look, let's forget the company. Set aside the company's name. Let's flip it. Let's say you have $100 million that you're insuring people. Let's replace this person's name from being your aunt.

And let's just name this client, John Adams. The profile of the person's health comes to you, height and weight. Would you put $100 million of your money that you put as an insurance company? Would you risk a million of it with this person saying, they're healthy? Absolutely not. Why would you expect an insurance company to do that? That totally makes sense. We got everybody to be thinking about like underwriters. They're thinking like business people. Let's go to insurance today. Do you know 7% of loans in California are not being closed because when the homeowner, the person that's buying the house, when it comes to the end and I'm like,

yeah, great, I like the loan amount. I can afford to pay for it. And then the premium for insurance comes they're like, oh, I can't afford this. Yeah. Honey, we can't afford to pay this much. They're canceling it. Yes, I read that. My pastor from L.A., who's a pastor of one of the biggest churches

in California, 20,000 plus members, he gave me his permission to share his name. We talked about it on the podcast. Pastor Dudley Rutherford, 38 years, he's been paying homeowners insurance in California. A week before the fire, one of the biggest insurance companies in California,

send them a letter saying, we're canceling the homeowners insurance. We can't afford it no more. You know how many companies? companies are leaving the state of California. And by the way, it's so easy for politicians to say, you can't do that. You can't leave our state. Guess what? They also left Florida. So it's not like I'm taking shots at California. Insurance, homeowners insurance companies, some of them left California because of hurricane. Makes sense. Why am I taking it? Now, California is saying, no, you have to

protect these homes. Even in the risk areas, you have to do this. No, I'm not going to do this. Guess what? We're out. Guy Co. left a couple years ago saying we're shutting down all our offices. More insurance companies are, but by the way, Pierce, four years ago, COVID happened. Five years ago, COVID happened in California. They had the first negative net migration since 1851. It's never happened, right? And that was due to the handling of COVID. What do you think happens now?

How many people you think are sitting there saying, babe, what are we doing living here? Nevada's right next to us. No state taxes. Maybe we don't go to Texas. Maybe we don't go to Florida. Maybe we don't go to Tennessee. But maybe we go to Nevada. You think California is seen an Exodus?

Do you know, by the way, they handle things like this? So imagine somebody wants to buy a house the next three to five years. You're sitting there saying, do I, you buying a house today in California, here's what you're really saying. Let me say this very clearly. If you're buying a house in California today, the next two, three, five years, what you're telling yourself is that you trust the politicians of California to prevent the next major wildfire from taking place.

And I guarantee you many people, California, 53% of people that live in California, I believe are homeowners, many of the people that are earners, they're sitting there saying, babe, I don't know if I want to do it again. Maybe we'll just rent or maybe we'll move out. But I'm definitely not investing in buying a house in California. That thought is crossing every single homeowner's mind right now. Listen, it's crossing mine. Do I want to carry on having a house in Beverly Hills, right? Because it's terrifying how quickly these things can engulf whole areas. I never thought Pacific Palisades. when I drove through there, would ever, ever end up completely incinerated like that. It just seemed unthinkable. But you're kind of, you know, you tell at the start, the job of elected politicians is to think the unthinkable, to have a team of people around them where they game out the unthinkable and then they take preemptive measures to stop them happening. It seemed to me that the kind of reaction we're getting here is,

well, we couldn't have done anything about it. Well, how do you know? Because it looked to me like the preparation to try to stop this happening. was pretty poor. Yeah, you know what's the great thing when you have a super majority in a state? Here's what's a great thing. When you have it, you get to come up

with whatever policies and solutions you have. California is all ran by the left. It's, I mean, everything, the house, the Senate, you look at it, it's all the government. Everything is ran by the left. What happens when you have the super majority? You get to buy all the victories, which means if you solve a massive problem

in the state of California, the big victory. If something happens and you were able to prevent it and people were happy with you, you get to say, this is due to great democratic policies. But guess what? When shit hits the fan and you have the supermajority and you've had it for a long time, you know what you can't get to say? You can't say, what's because of Congress. They wouldn't sign that bill we put in front of them. It's because of Senate. We couldn't pass the bill. It's because you can't get to say it. It's all on you. You have no excuses. Everything falls on you. Jack Hibbs gave an incredible speech. Everybody should go watch what he said. I tweeted his message that he put out there. He says,

everyone's to blame here. These are your policies. So what's going to happen now? So California, California people that live there who love that state. I love California. It's the only place in the world that I can go close my eyes and I know all the freeways in Southern California. It doesn't matter where it is. I can drive everywhere. It's a beautiful place. Amazing people live there. think about the amount of innovation, movies, influence it's had around the world. That's being destroyed today. FYI, just 40 years ago,

the governor was a Republican. And even recently, we had an Arnold, but I don't know if I would put Arnold as a Republican governor. He's more of some people would call him a rhino. I don't know if he's fully a conservative, conservative governor. But I think the people in California right now have to sit there and think about a few different things. Number one, is the direction you're going right now?

working. No. Great. Two, what do you want to do about it? You got a couple options. One, sit up there and say nothing and take it. Well, that's definitely not going to be the case. It's off the table. Great. Two, leave the state. I'm not leaving the state. I love it here. To live and die in LA, etc., etc. Or no, you know what? We're thinking about it. Great. You know what three is? Get behind someone to help them win. Or else they will continue to do this to you and there's nothing. can do about it. So this ought to rally more people to do something about it. The concept of rallying today needs to happen. There needs to be an element of rallying behind somebody to help that state's change instead of constantly voting somebody like Newsomim that we see the results of it

on a daily basis. Did you feel Patrick, like, I mean, Elon Musk talks about the woke mind virus. And then several days ago, he said he thinks that it's basically been eradicated, the scale of Trump win the way he won, how he won the people he won with. And now you have this devastating disaster in California, which many people are putting down to Newsom and his woke policies and so on. Do you feel like this woke mind virus that kind of enveloped people for quite a few years? Is it done? Is it finished? Is it on the retreat? What do you feel about it? Well, we just have to be careful that it doesn't go on the complete opposite side. because the problem with it's not necessarily the woke,

it's the extreme of both sides. When you use extreme measures from one side, you give birth to extreme measures of opposition on the other side. So that's what we have to be careful with. What does that look like? I don't want either one of them. I'm a center-right guy, free enterprise, go build a business as big as you want,

build your dreams, free market, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly. You want to be a Scientologist, more power to you. I've worked with many great Scientologists. You want to be a Christian, awesome. You want to be a Mormon? No problem. You want to be an atheist, agnostic. Let's debate it. Let's sit down and do a podcast and talk about it. Fantastic. You want to do any of that. You want to be pro-choice, pro-life? Let's talk about it. Let's process it. You want to go out there and influence my kids to be learning about LGBTQ at a young age? No, we're not doing that.

That's just common sense. Leave it alone. Let them make a decision after 18 years old. We don't need to talk. You want to indoctrinate things like that. We don't. We just. draw the line. But we got to also be careful on the complete opposite side to realize that what makes America great is the fact that a young kid like me living in Iran who loved America, wanted to find a way to come to America. I go to Germany at a refugee camp for a year and a half, cost my parents a divorce. We wait for a green card. I come to the state. I end up going to the U.S. Army, Hunterford's Airborne Division, Airisol. I fall in love with America where I started a company where the cause of it was saving America

by bringing back the free enterprise system and hope to American families. We have to also not lose the people that want to bring their strengths here and give it to the country they love. I think that's the part that we have to be very careful with this next phase we're going. We can't just be like, oh, the woke virus is over.

No, but we just gave birth to these guys now. Yeah. It needs to be more to be in reason. We have to be able to reason together and recognize this. Well, you have to remember, I think, that at their core, the majority of people,

I'd say 75, 80% of America, probably the same here, actually have a vein of common sense running through their blood. I mean, they just do, right? They just have that. It's like, I just don't believe most people fall into the extremity camp.

What happens on social media is that a smaller percentage of people are extremely noisy and relentless, and they create an atmosphere that everyone's buying into its extreme left, extreme right stuff. And actually, they're not really. Instinctively, most people do not go out to the extremities. Yeah, but the challenge with that is who can they convert?

Right. So imagine a person that's a nimble mind that their mind's not been made up and they're still kind of wishy-washy. You can get millions of people like that to lean the way of somebody that's super loud. So what we need to recognize today, any time, whether you're running a company with your kids, you're trying to have, you know, four kids, you're running a business, you're running a sports team, whatever you're running that in your team, somebody turns against you, okay? I'm watching this movie yesterday called the football movie with Denzel Washington,

where he's a coach. Remember the Titans. Yeah. And they're about to go away for this hell week for two weeks. And there's the white coach that he replaces, and he's the black coach, and the black players are happy that he's the coach and a white players don't want to play because he's no longer the coach. They're not going for the two weeks. And what does he do? He says, hey, listen, boy, white boys are going to go here and black boys are going to go here. Says, no, no, no, it's not what we're doing. Defense, offense. I don't care who it is. White black, defenses on this bus, offenses on this bus. And they're getting on there. What happens next? Fights, agitation, annoyance. Then he says, we're going to. We're going to. We're going to. We're going to,

to do four-day practice every day unless if you get to know the other person and you know them on a personal level. If you don't, we're doing four-dayers. Okay, tell me about your family. Tell me about your family. Then they get to know each other. Two weeks later, they're disconnected from the actual racism that was taking place in America, from their families, their parents, the teachers, anybody.

They're now best friends. Everything is like, man, I like you. I don't care what skin color you are. You just blocked for me. Hey, how come you're not doing your part? I'm white, you're white. Hey, how come you're not doing your part? I'm black, you're black.

Dude, this is not about black and white. Let's play together. Then when they got off the bus, they went back to what everybody else was thinking like because they haven't had their shift yet. I think this next phase we go through, it's going to take some strong leaders that have to know that they're going to get battle tested.

You're going to get provoked. People are going to come take shots at you. People are going to get targeted. It's going to be a very weird next phase we go through. And we have to be very aware. very aware of the manipulation and gamification that takes place. If they target one person and they go after somebody, let's before we jump to conclusion,

let's kind of do our due diligence. Why are they going after this guy? What are they doing with Vivek? Why are they going after Trump? Why are they going after Reagan? Do your part to kind of step back a little bit and look at it before jump into conclusion based on what the mob is saying to you.

What do you want to hear Trump say at his inauguration? What do I want to hear him say? Yeah. You know, it's not even about what I want to hear him say. I think this is the first time in a long time where I don't have anything to say that I'd want him to hear say this. Like, let me go back to 2015 when he said he's running. It's like, well, you know, that's not presidential. Well, you know, you can't say something like that. Well, you know, you can't. All the people were saying certain things. And 2020 was probably when I was the most critical because he seemed bitter and offended by all the lies and things that they said about him and he didn't know how to handle it.

COVID, everything was his fault. And he came from a place of being a little bit bitter, which, by the way, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that he doesn't have the right to feel that way. Imagine if everybody is spinning false stories about you and more than half the country believes you to the point that they vote you out, But those things weren't true.

And you're falling for that trap. You know, everybody's fighting for their character, their reputation, the trust that they've established the 78 years of working hard in a community that people know you're good, bad and ugly. You want to come here and say something like this. I'm linked to Russia where you pay $35 million for it? What? I did this to E.J. and Carol? I did that.

You're out of your mind. You know, Marlock was only worth $18 million. When I watch President Trump today speak, this is the first time. I see him in flow state. I mean, there's a book called Power versus Force that gives the level of consciousness of a country or an individual or leaders. And it starts from a very low score,

then it goes to courage, then it goes to willingness, acceptance, the ability to reason and kind of going into love, joy, but ability to reason, it is incredibly impressive the way he's communicating right now, casting a vision with Greenland, cast in a vision with Mexico,

the Gulf of America, you know, making Canada the 51st states, yet at the same time, sitting next to Barack Obama, making him laugh, standing up in front of Pence, willing to shake his hand, willing to shake all these guys

and talking to them and knowing that Mike Pence's wife doesn't get up, his wife is being respectful, he's willing to go do that and still challenge. Listen, he's in flow state right now. My main number one... My theory is that I've,

spoken to him quite a few times since he got shot. And I just detected that really did have a profound effect on him. And that effect was exacerbated by the scale of his win, that he no longer has to fight because he can't run again. So he's now achieved the greatest comeback in history. And he survived an assassination attempt. And every time I've talked to him, it's been like, wow, this is a much calmer Donald Trump. It's not to say he won't have that. pugilist streak when he needs to, or if people goad him, he won't respond because he'll always do that. You're not going to change when you're nearly 80. But he's definitely a change guy. He definitely is thinking big picture legacy, delivery on what he's promised this time. He believes, and we'll see

whether this works out the way he hopes. He believes that he's worked out what went wrong in his first term and what went right and how to avoid making the same mistakes he made and how to how to get the right kind of people around him, which are all people that he wants them to be loyal. I don't have any problem with that. We all want loyal people around us. They're all slightly disruptive, the people in his cabinet, which he's picked, which I think, again,

I'm in favour of that. It'd be interesting to see whether a disruptive collection of people who come at it from a slightly different perspective to establishment figures, whether that can be more effective. I suspect it might be. But overall, I get a feeling of a guy who just thinks, I've got a chance. I mean, he said this to me. He's got a chance to be a genuinely now transformative and historic president as opposed to just the most divisive polarizing president of all time, which was his reputation in the first four years.

No, I agree. And again, when it comes on to inauguration, my number one priority between now and January 20th is overly, overly, overly prepared and paranoid about everything hiring the right independent. private military contractors, not just relying on National Guard and relying on Secret Service, you know, additional protection above and beyond anything else anybody else is offering you. I think, you know, I still say to people, the first shooting was extraordinarily appalling failure by the Secret Service. To not check where that kid was on that roof so close to Trump on a rally stage was was unforgivable.

But actually, what happened a few weeks later on his golf course, I felt, was worse because by then he'd already been shot a few weeks before. And there he is playing golf at his regular course on a Sunday when he regularly plays there. And the guy sitting in a bush where the media go to get a clean shot, ironically, of Trump with their cameras. And this guy sits there with an AK-47 for 12 hours and comes within four minutes. And a secret service agent's very, very sharp eyes spotting the barrel of the rifle out of the bush. Without that, Trump would have been killed a few weeks after surviving an assassination attempt.

And I felt then, wow, who is protecting him, this guy? And why are they not doing a better job? Yeah. A part of that is why he's so attractive. Because in 30 years, Pierce, we're going to be at a movie theater. And we're going to be watching a movie, God willing, made by a person that knows what they're doing and playing his part the right way. It's probably going to happen next 10, 20, 30 years.

and he won't be here with us when that takes place. And you will be explaining these stories to your grandkids or whoever it is. They're going to say, so let me get the straight. He just had an assassination attempt. Three weeks later he's golfing. Yes. Why is he doing that?

See, that's the dynamic of why he's different. I do think, I think, yeah, on that point, I mean, I felt obviously the symbolism of him jumping back up when he got shot and saying fight, fight, fight, fight. It was incredibly powerful. I think that probably maybe that moment won in the election, actually when we look back in history, along with other things.

But that was an amazing moment of defiance. And Americans like that. But I also felt that his general balls, let's put it no other way, of getting back out onto a rally stage a week later. I spoke to him a week after he got shot. And he'd just been on a rally stage at night. I went, how did you get back out so quickly?

There's no part of you be worried about 20,000 complete strangers again, a bigger audience. and he said an interesting thing. The first time I've heard him be slightly vulnerable. He said, you know, I knew if I didn't get back out there quickly, I might never get back out there. And I thought that was an interesting admission, but also a great testament to his strength of character

because it's one thing to think that, it's another thing to do it. And he's carried on appearing in public ever since. Big, big gatherings. And a little part of him must be thinking, maybe even a big part. I wonder if there's another assassin. out there. And then he's still out there. And I think that is, it's bullsy. Whatever you think of him,

it's bullsey. There was a book written, I think it's called David and Goliath, not David versus Goli, but David and Goliath, where the author talks about what happens to people who have a close call with death. And what happens to them afterwards? It broke down the fact that people start thinking that somebody has their back and they're protected. It's a bigger calling. It's a bigger purpose. You know, you're looking at life in a complete different way. One of my favorite quotes of all time by a German philosopher is,

if a lion could speak, the world would not understand them. He is right now at a phase where he is looking at life and the world in a way that majority of the world simply will not understand. I completely agree. And I think that's what makes it to me very exciting. It's interesting, like the reaction to Panama, to Greenland, to Mexico, to Canada, all those things, was sort of, it was a half-hearted attempt to go back to 2016, 1718, where every single thing Trump did, everybody went into sort of anaphylactic shock of, you know,

it's all terrible, he's evil, blah, blah, blah. Well, actually, all I did was I went away and I googled all these things. I didn't know the history of the Panama Canal very well. And then I found out that in 1977, America gave it away under Jimmy Carter for a dollar and that it may not have been the best decision America ever took. So actually, from a business point of view, is it actually a good idea to bring it back under American control?

Greenland. Who owns Greenland? I didn't know Denmark owned Greenland. So I'm kind of fascinated to discover that. Has it been a good thing for Greenland that Denmark owns them? Clearly, it's an arguable position. Do people in Greenland quite like the idea of becoming part of America? It turned out a lot of them do. So, you know, as a lot of things Trump says, often like the 60% tariffs on China,

I knew the moment he said it, he doesn't actually mean 60% tariffs. He's not going to do that. But what he's doing is laying a little marker down to the Chinese, you better back off or I'm going to hammy. And then there'll be a deal. And he may do some tariffs. at a lower level. But you've got to understand

the person now and I think that more people than before understand what they're dealing with and understand he does all this stuff and as a kind of cause and effect and there's a sort of method to the apparent madness.

No, you're right. And by the way, on the tariff side, if I was to ask the average person right now that's watching the show, how much revenue do you think the U.S. collects from tariffs every year? If I was to ask the question and say, hey, what do you think is a total amount of revenue? So, you know, 25%, 50%, 10%, how much you think it comes to U.S. every year in taxes?

You know what that number would be? Most people would say, oh, we probably collect a half a trillion dollars. I would never clue. I bet it's very low from the way you're billing this. $80 billion are average tariffs, 2% to countries around the world. In my opinion, that needs to be raised. to 25% period to do business with the U.S., and that'll bring the revenue up to a trillion dollars,

and that's how you'll allow our taxes to decrease in the states. I think if Doge, if they do what they're doing right and they drive efficiency, you're going to see taxes drop, and you're going to see for the first time us starting to pay off some of our debt, and even the $1.4 trillion or $1.1 trillion that we owe in bonds to Japan that we're paying interest on on a yearly basis, we can simply sit there and say,

hey, we have 52,000 troops, give or take in Japan. We've been protecting you since what year? Let's do the math on how much money we've given you over the years of protection. Why don't we do this? Why don't we wipe out the bonds that you have with us with the debt to make us even?

We'll continue, or else we're leaving you. And if we leave you, we know you're a little bit concerned. I think there's so many creative ways for these tariffs to actually be used in an efficient, effective way, positively impact U.S. citizens, Americans, because that's what the job is

and I think they're going to be doing. Well, I saw a great story Michael Moore was telling. I think it was about Detroit. Don't hold me to that. It's somewhere like Detroit. And he was talking about Trump's appeal to working class voters and stuff. And he said, you know, Trump went down there

wherever it was, and he just spoke to the war. And he said, look, the moment I get back into the White House, I'm going to put whacking great tariffs on whatever industry he was talking to, may have been cars, perhaps. Wacking great tariffs on importing from these other countries. And here's what's going to happen. That's going to force companies in America to open more factories

and give you guys more jobs. And more so whatever you think of Trump, and he obviously is a massive non-fan. He said, you've got to think that's incredibly smart politics. And you've got to think probably he's going to do it, which he probably will, because he believes that is fundamental to the making America great thing. You bring a lot of outsourced jobs back

from outside America to America. And when I even Michael Moore's conceding that, you can see that Trump, for all the negative stuff mainly around his rhetoric actually, is kind of natural instincts are pretty good. There is no question about it. And he knows, he makes story. He gets the world to talk about Greenland.

When's the last time we thought about, when's the last time on a podcast or a show, they talk about Greenland? I never knew it was owned by Denmark. Did you know it was owned by Denmark? I didn't know that. Yeah, well, I mean, we learned a lot about Greenland that we didn't know about 56,000 people living there,

you know, what their resources are, you know, you look at the map, or you have to look at it in the right angle or else it looks bigger than America. It's really two and a half times Texas. That's a lot. I mean, there's a lot of things you learn about, but that's the thing.

He makes a call. Panama Canal we knew about because the challenges that was taking place, and that was not a good negotiation. with Jimmy Carter, he's just kind of like, yeah, let's just move on and X, Y, Z. And then China gets closer there. That's very problematic if they get influence on them. So that's the right move.

By the way, us having control of Panama will keep China on this long term. So I'm all for U.S. finding a way to take control over Panama, and they need funding right now to rebuild. They need $5 billion. They need a lot of money to rebuild the place because they are having some issues. But, again, that's the quality of a visionary. A visionary lives in the future truth. To him in the future, these are all things that are happening.

So he cast at first, the critics say, you're crazy. Then a few people who are the scholars and people who are reading and actually historians are like, no, this is not actually crazy. Here's what this is. Oh, okay. And then it becomes a reality. Then he gets qualified as a visionary. So I think this is going to happen a lot the next four years.

For the viewer, strap on your seatbelt. You're about to go on a wild ride the next four years. A final question, Patrick. If you were a betting man, how long did you give the Trump-Elon romance? What a question to ask. You know, I'll answer it in a different way. Here's how I'll answer it. I think we're about to find out what Elon's real long-term vision is.

Yeah. Let me explain what I mean by this. you know the benefit of knowing when you're talking to somebody else who if they fear God, what's the benefit of having the fear of God and you have a certain faith, you follow, what happens when you have someone that fears God? You kind of know there are certain things they're not going to cross. You know, they're just not. And then there are some, you know, communities where there is the aspiration to want to be God.

And that is a, you know, you don't want to flirt with that. And, you know, here's a person that's done something that nobody's ever done in history of mankind. You're worth a half a trillion dollars. You're operating companies and working 120 hours a week based on his saying on how his schedule is right now, seven days a week, and he's driving all these businesses. I think in this context, if he chooses to be the flag carrier towards Trump, behind closed doors, You have to know the woman he's talking to, his friends, his co-workers, people are giving him so much flattery of without you, Trump would have never won,

without this. If that doesn't get to his head and he stays stable and focused on the vision, it's going to be the greatest duo ever. But this year on my vision board, I put a picture of two players on the middle of my vision board. I'm a diehard Kobe Bryant, and God bless you. of Seoul and Shaq, and the picture's right in the middle. If those two guys could work together, we could have won eight championships back to back to back. And I think in that part, one of them had to realize you're the flag carrier. You're not the number one.

That's, you know what? If the flag becomes number one, I think it's very problematic. But I think a lot of things are going to be revealed the next 12 to 24 months in the relationship of Ilana and Trump. Yeah, it's such a great comparison. I would say that Elon is smart enough. clearly, he's probably factored in that it's going to be great for business if he stays closely aligned to Trump. And I think that that will always concentrate his mind in allowing Trump to obviously be top-dog, because if he doesn't, Trump will probably separate them, and that's going to be bad for business. So I just think that he's smart enough to have worked that out. We shall see that. Be fascinating. Patrick, brilliant to talk to you. Thank you very much.

Thanks for having me on. Well, the legendary actor Dennis Quay made global headlines for his last appearance on this show, declaring unforgettably that people might call Donald Trump an asshole, but he's my asshole. Well, this week you made news for different sadder reasons in very somber circumstances, taking time out to praise firefighters in a roadside interview as he evacuated his home in Los Angeles.

I came back just in case, you know, had shut off the gas and all those little things you don't think of and just thought maybe I can be there and put a hose on a roof if the embers start coming over at least. We're fighting as hard as we can to save our city. Gosh, I never thought I'd say that.

Returning exclusively, too uncensored. I'm done to say, Dennis Quaid, is back with me. Dennis, it's great to see you, and I really mean that, because if things have played out differently, you might not have been here. I mean, it's been utterly horrific to watch the scenes. home in Beverly Hills.

And I've been watching these scenes with utter horror. You, I think the fires came within 150 yards of your place in Brentwood, I think. First of all, how are you? How are you dealing with this? I'm doing fine. Peers, thanks for having me here. And my family's doing fine. We were evacuated the first day.

I live in the Manderville Canyon area. And I went back the next day on Wednesday, and that's when the fire came within 150 yards the first time of the house. And we had firefighters on my block just parked there ready to meet the fire when it came. I can't say enough about the firefighters who have come really all over the world to help out. fighting this fire. I was out there in case I could put a hose on my roof or anything I could do for that.

And fire is an animal that's it's the scariest thing I think that we face in natural disasters. And I'm just glad to be here with you here today and I want to see my beloved city that it would be that moved out there in 1975, and I want to see it come back. Did you ever think in all the time you've lived in L.A.

that you would ever see this kind of apocalyptic scenario unfold? Well, I've been through many fires in L.A. I had two fires in my Montana home, in fact, have been through that. But nobody expected anything like this. nobody ever dreamed that it would come down and go past sunset and cause the kind of destruction that it caused. It's just unbelievable. Mandeville Canyon, where I live, there's one way in and there's a fire road at the top in case you know you need to evacuate there to get out. and the vegetation is, there's so much of it that it's like a tender box.

And starting about a year, year and a half ago, the insurance AIG pulled out. That was my insurance company at the time of California. And it became almost impossible to get fire insurance. And that's, I know a lot of people just last month, where their insurance was cancelled, and gosh, my heart goes out to those people. It's pretty bad. Did you manage to get insurance in the end for your place?

Yes, we took insurance. It doesn't cover the whole thing, but at least we had some insurance that I could live with. I'm one of the lucky ones that's able to, afford and be able to take loss, but there's people out there that have just lost everything. And it leads to the question, I mean, the insurance companies know. When they're, you know, they're all about probability and the worst case scenarios happen and because they can happen, the worst case scenario.

And do they, you know, question is, do they look into, the way cities handle any kind of fire protection of what is the substructure of that city. And they knew something that we all didn't or chose not to pay attention to. That an occurrence like this was going to happen and they weren't willing to take the loss on it. How many people do you know personally

you've lost their homes? At least 100. Wow. At least. A hundred people? Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I have one friend who lost three homes.

In fact, two of the, he was living in one. He was renting another in the Palisades, and he just finished another home in Malibu that they were going to move into. And that was taken. out just like that as well. And, you know, I've heard a lot, well, these are rich people or whatever. These are people who work hard to make a success in life for their families. They moved to the palisades because it's so family friendly. It's a great place for kids to grow up. My son, Jack, his boyhood memories are wrapped up there.

He was, it is the first place like he could go when he was about nine years old with a couple of friends. And you felt good about letting him out there in the village to hang out with his friends and go to the stores and just have a good time. And that's all gone. Yeah. What do you, I mean, have you got any information

about your property now? Do you know how close the fires have got since you were last there? Well, Saturday, that was the big day where the fire came again within about 200 feet of the house. And in fact, if anybody was watching television on that day, I saw my house and saw them fighting it. Wow. They were able to stop. In fact, where my house is located is really kind of the chief. choke point. If the fire had made it over, that little ridge there, it was in danger of just

what happened in the palisades and just sweeping down and taking out Brentwood and burning towards the 405 and Westwood. Yeah. It could have been much worse. The night before, Wednesday night, I've gone to get a couple of final things out of my home that I'd forgotten. And there were at least a hundred fire engines, just parked bumper to bumper up Manable Canyon Road, ready to take it out. There were hundreds, maybe thousands of firefighters up there on the line. And so what happened in the palisades with no warning, we had a better chance that day because they were already geared up

and ready to fight the fire. You know, I've been talking to my wife about, as it's edged ever closer on occasion to the 405 to potentially Bel Air, Beverly Hills, where our places. It's like, what do you do? You know, you said you took possessions. What did you prioritize? I'm just curious. What goes to your mind when you kind of think what you take? My brain just couldn't process it. It doesn't want it. It didn't want to go there. And so you're in your closet. And, you know, I grabbed my dad's little figurine of a Mickey Mouse,

one of the original little figurines. That's because those are my memories. It's the precious little things like that that mean nothing to anyone else, you know, photos that you can't get back. And the other stuff, well, it's, it's, It's just stuff, on the other hand. It's really about your memories. Your identity is wrapped up in your home.

And there's thousands of people, hundreds of thousands, of people wondering who am I now? Because your home does do that to you. Who am I? Yeah, it is absolutely part of your identity. It's what you build your life. I saw a guy, actually, in his 90s. He was being interviewed on cable news somewhere.

And he said that although it hadn't taken his own life, it had taken all his life from him. And I really, that really resonated with me. He felt like his entire 90-year existence was wrapped up in that property. And even though he survived and was alive, everything that he had gone. And I felt so emotional for him, actually. Well, you know, I think we all got a big lesson that our experience of reality, it can turn in a moment just like that. And it's hard to comprehend.

And that's when you need a higher power to lean on to remember who you are. So you can take care of yourself and your family. And hopefully this is going to be over in a couple of days. And the rebuilding process is going to start in some months. Once they get all this toxic waste that is now on the ground cleaned up. The Palisades, it'll be back to what it was in 1901, where you have, you know, these, I think it was probably a bean field back then. Yeah.

And they're going to start again. And but so we have to start planning about how we're going to rebuild once this is over. Do you fear, do you fear, Dennis, that there'll be? I don't really have a lot of confidence in our government. Well, that's what I was going to come to. I was going to ask you, because the government's come under multi-pronged. attack, whether it's Governor Newsom, whether it's Karen Bass, the mayor, whether it's the fire department themselves. What are you feeling? The more you've learned, the more you've read,

who do you feel is most to blame here for what's happened in terms of officialdom? Well, Mayor Bass had five days warning about what could be record Santa Ana wins. They come every year. You don't have to wonder about that. They're going to be there, and that's usually the way fires start. And she chose to go to Ghana anyway. And when she came back, there's that video that went viral of getting off the plane. And that reporter, yeah, and yes, maybe she was ambushed or whatever, but to say nothing in that interview. You've got to hit the ground running there to let people know that you're going to

in charge and you've already been doing things about it. And it's there was no evacuation plan that makes me wonder about the next earthquake, the next mudslides that are going to happen. You know, planning for the future. It's about, look at an airplane. When the masks come down, they tell you to put your mask on first and then your child's. And that's what grown-ups do. And that's the way you both survive.

And it's, I'm really in favor of a recall. I think it's that important to not wait for the next election, to have a recall of Mayor Bass have an election. And I have, this is not about Republican or Democrat. This is, I have a question. Who would you rather rebuild the Palisades? Mayor Bass, do that all this warning, and or Rick Caruso. Yeah. Who built the Grove. He built the Palisades Village, which is 99% in town. In fact, in fact, that's the guy that I want to rebuild this place and to do it the right way because, you know, the mistakes, we have a long way to go, but the mistakes made at the beginning, the, it's going to be the result is going to be ill-fated because of these mistakes made at the beginning. The way to do it efficiently, to keep an eye on the cost.

Here's a guy that was that he's a developer. He's a builder. He knows the community. You know, what's it going to look like when it comes back? To have that feeling of a community. The Palisades Village, gosh, it took, that was quite an undertaking. He had so much opposition getting built over there. And he was patient and crossed every tea.

They had, he built the village with fire retardant materials, non-combustible. They had their own fire station, basically, there and crew who have protocols that, you know, they had rehearsed what they were going to do. years ago. And they did that so that they could free up the city fire department to be able to save homes. Right. And then the running out of water in the fire hydrants is just unacceptable. I remember a couple of years ago over on sunset Boulevard right around the Palisades, Bel Air fire hydrants bursting because they were old. And we haven't done the work on the substructure of our city.

People don't even think about it until it's not there. How much do you blame Gavin Newsom for this? Gavin Newsom wasn't the mayor of Los Angeles, but he did. This is what happens. with the woke philosophy that we've been living under for the last couple, the social experiment, I'll call it. He cut $100 million out of the fire to protection for California,

but we spent $3 billion for health care for illegal aliens. That doesn't make sense to me. I mean, he has aspirations to be President of the United States one day and purportedly has said he was to make America like California. Do you think that's literally gone up in smoke now, that aspiration? Oh, my God. I don't think that's America, to tell you the truth. He talks a good game. There was that video with a woman the other day at one of the firesites.

and he was that phone that he was supposedly on with President Biden. He was using that to like his body language said at all. He was holding that out to keep her away. And at the same time, he was reaching for the handle of the car to get away from it all because he realized the cameras were there and it wasn't a good look rather than really thinking about this woman and the anguish that she was going through and being there for her, which was she represented really all of us. Do you think this will end up being Newsom's legacy?

I don't know. There's a lot. There's a long list to go down. And there's one person within city government, and that is, that is the fire chief, who had the guts to go on camera and really tell it like it was. I thought she was very impressive. Yeah. Was stripped. I thought she was really impressive. I had great respect for her. Yes.

Very impressive. I felt the same way, because there'd been this whole debate about impacted DEI on the fire department and this ridiculous video that one of them had put out saying, you want to have someone like me turn up to it, which was obviously stupid, and very woke and imbecilic in the message it was trying to convey. But at the same time, I thought that fire chief, when she came out, everything she has said has actually been. incredibly direct, very impressive, but also it's not been contradicted or denied by any of the people

she's talking about. You haven't seen Mayor Bass try to fire her or deny it or contradict it, which makes me think that everything she's saying is true. We need a leader in our city who knows how to do things. It's different issues now than what Mayor Bass was elected on. Okay, the social experiment. We tried it. It's now about rebuilding the city. Yeah. How many families are going to even be able to rebuild? How can you rebuild if you can't get your house insured? What's it going to look like?

Are there's things like corporations are buying up droves of houses in this country. And what's the end result? How's that going to affect the American dream of home ownership? Is it going to, nobody wants to see the Palisades become rental property from a corporation. And it's, we got to be careful and tread lightly, but we really have to have a plan. And I think Rick Caruso is the man to do that. He's like really in the line of stuff, Tom Bradley and Myrdon and those guys who really knew what they were doing. Do you fear, Dennis, there may be, I mean, not least because of the insurance company issue, they were already removing cover from people before this.

Obviously, at the very least, premiums will go through the roof. Some of these companies may just get out of L.A. altogether and say there's no economic viability in staying there. All of that is going to have a massive impact on the city and on people thinking about whether to stay there. I mean, do you fear there might be a big exodus of people? Well, why are the insurance companies, why did they drop everyone? They dropped everyone because it's wilderness behind my house, really, state-owned land. And the brush that's grown up there, it's a... Tenderbox. We used to, you know, we used to cut down trees in the lumber industry. And

that, you know, we abandoned that because of conservation or whatever. But then all those trees died and weren't removed, you know, in the forest of California. And used to be also, I've had places in the hills in L.A. three or four times. And there was a brush control where you as a homeowner responsible, especially if you live on a hillside, to clear the brush out from your backyard. So it doesn't, if a fire happened, it doesn't burn up your neighbor in the back. And they had city inspectors who would come out and they made you clean it up or you were fined. Since COVID, none of that has been going on in L.A. Nobody has ever come. out to my home there in Mandeville about the brush. And it's little things like that.

But if you do something about it, if you go out there and create areas where large areas, swaths where fire couldn't cross if it started to begin with, especially the power lines, putting them underground, $3 billion for illegals, can you imagine with that if that'd been spent on power lines that are up on the fire trails and just put them under ground, there's another source of the fire that you're going to eliminate. And if you do the thing and the substructure, the city really get down and making sure like San Annes

Reservoir, should have had water for a year and a half. It's been offline. It was just sitting up there. if that had been available, who's to say? Right. Yes, maybe the fire would have passed sunset and taken out everything anyway, but you've done everything that you can. And if you do everything that you can, then I think that the insurance companies are going to come back. I think that they left because they saw that the city itself was

was not taking care of doing its due diligence about making things safe in a place where that probability would go down. Dennis, like a lot of people, you're evacuated, it's been reported you're living in one of the hotels. What is life like for you at the moment? Are you just in complete limbo? Well, it's fine for me. Pierce, you know, my family's safe.

And like, yeah, I'm one of those rich people that it's when things like that happen, it's, it's so much easier for me than, than most people. And it's, we're still have, I think, the next 48 hours, they say until Wednesday. Yeah. Because they can predict these wins. That's the, this is the important part. And kind of, if we can get past these next couple of days, I think we can really get a handle on it and have people go back to their homes and start to assess and rebuild their lives. Get the kids back to school in Los Angeles. Right now, it's, it feels like COVID again.

My kids, school gets canceled and we're going to go back to home learning. Palisades High burned down to the ground. Where do your kids go to school? Gas stations are gone. The grocery stores are gone. The businesses that have been there and landmarks of the community are gone. People lost their business and their homes. What do they do?

of the people that my heart goes out to and that we have to do something about immediately to give them relief. A lot of people are living month to month or at best maybe have a three to six months cushion built into their plan because they're both they're both working and they're, you know, they had this dream of moving to a place like the Palisades. It's so great for their kids and having the kind of childhood that they had. And they're really worried that that's gone. And we need to help everyone. Yeah.

Dennis, I can't let you go without referencing back to our last interview. It made a lot of headlines. Donald Trump is now president. I'll play the clip to remind people of your great line about him. That's just gorgeous this. All right. People might call him an asshole. But he's my asshole.

Right. No, I get that. Because he's, I'll tell you, one true thing about him is that I really feel that he is working for the American people. That's what he's all about. When you said that, Dennis, he got a lot of pick up. But actually, you were completely vindicated in the sense that obviously many, many other Americans came to the similar conclusion that you did, hence the scale of his victory. Well, I think President Trump is for the American people. I think that's what he thinks about in his policies and his actions.

And, you know, although they may not like him so much in California, he's there for them. And he's going to do the right thing. and in spite of Newsom, in spite of Bass. You know, in the state legislature two days ago, they passed a bill for, what, $25 million to still battle Donald Trump to keep him out, his policies out of California. We all need to work together here.

Forget about Republican, forget about Democrat. And that's what he's doing. And, you know, by the way, in the next election, if the Democrats have a candidate that really makes more sense than what the Republicans are already doing, I'll vote for them, too. It's about what's best for America. What do we need right now as a people today in our times? And I think President Trump, I think he's going to be really, he's exactly what we need right now. Did you have a conversation with him after your asshole quote? Briefly.

Well, his son was like, gosh, you really get my dad. about being an asshole, but it was like, you know, he's brash. And, you know, that's where he comes off and, and he says things that make people go, what? But, you know, a lot of them turn out to be true. I remember when he was, you know, first going to run for president. He said, you know, he's going to build a wall. And people like, that's the craziest idea of I ever heard. And he said, well, you know, if you don't have a border, you don't have a country.

Yeah. And he was right. Yeah. Dennis, it's great to catch up with you. I wish it was in happiest circumstance. I wish you all the very best with your home. I hope it survives. Like you say, the next 48 hours, very important in your area there.

I really appreciate you taking time out to talk to me and wish you and every, all the friends, I mean, 100 people, you know, lost their homes is completely heartbreaking. I know many people too, and our heart goes out to all of them. But thank you for spreading the time. You bet. I really believe in the past. I really believe in the power of prayer. And it goes, well, like with my kids, they were overdosed with Heparin and the worldwide. I really believe it was the power of prayer that saved them.

And I think really that's what we all need right now for the palisades, for Los Angeles, and for our country. The power of prayer unites us, brings us together, and makes us remember that it's, not just about us. Yeah. Well, I will be saying a prayer for you, your family, and for everyone in Los Angeles. It's been a great city for me. I love the people there. I love the city.

And I hope it rebuilds even better than it was before. It'll take time. But where there's a will and where there's God's will, there's a way. Dennis, great to see you. That's right. Thank you, Peers. God bless you. All the best.