WEBVTT

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My name is Cassandra. I live in a little town called Spruce Pond, North Carolina that was directly affected by Hurricane Helene.

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Anybody in their right mind thinking that outside

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people should not be speaking on what the government has done or is not doing to our area is

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insanity to me.

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As someone who is here at Ground Zero in Mitchell County, North Carolina

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it is going to take you,

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you as the creators on this app to speak up to get us help here.

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Because I will tell you our government is not doing a damn thing

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for us.

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Get here. We need you. We need people experienced in hiking.

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There's only a few ways to these people. It is to foot, horseback, or helicopter.

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Dirt box, ATVs, side by side. If you have them, it can get to East Tennessee or Western North Carolina.

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We need you. Do not listen to the news. When they tell you that they don't want you. They don't need you. I'm telling you

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I am here. I live here. I have been already. I'm telling you. We need you. We want you here.

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We're out of here.

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There's a little bit of road road.

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Transporting all the pets. All of their shit.

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This is basically what's stopping us from getting out of here.

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My house washed away.

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I had a cat. I had two geckos.

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I lost it all.

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People's lives could have been saved and the blood is going to be on the hands of those that

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did not allow that person who could go help to go help.

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I want to show you what Swannanoa looks like right now. At least the area that we're in.

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You can see there's still quite a bit of debris right there behind me and it just goes for miles.

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I mean there are cars that are abandoned all across this area and it's not that they're not

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coming out here and picking up and starting the recovery process. It's just that there is so much

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damage. This is the state of North Carolina. This is the area that's without power still.

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This is also the state of North Carolina. This yellow outline is the country of Belgium

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that I've overlaid for scale. This is the scale. 230,000 customers without power means

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households. Based on U.S. census data the average household size here is about three which means

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we're talking about six to seven hundred thousand people who have not had power for a week.

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That is an emergency by itself. If you don't have power for a week then if you had food

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stored in the freezer no you don't. If you had breast milk insulins stored in the fridge

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no you don't. You don't get to run your CPAP machine. Three quarters of a million people

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without power for a week should make headline news by itself. But power outages are unfortunately

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one of the mildest of problems. Water is also out. Cell coverage is out. If you're seeing people

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posting from this area there's a good likelihood they're having to drive miles to do that and

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that is if they have a car that wasn't destroyed, if they can get gas somehow,

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and if they have roads they can drive miles on. These are the road closures.

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Okay and these roads are not closed because there's some water on them. They're closed because they

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look like this now. What are the states in the storm zone need, Mr. President?

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Okay. What are the states in the storm zone? What do they need, every what you saw today?

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Oh, the storm zone? Yes, sir. I'm going with storm and dolphin though.

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They get everything they need and they're very happy.

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Well, this thing has been disgustingly and I do mean disgustingly politicized in recent days.

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I appreciate you giving me a call. Okay, well, know that we want to do everything we can and,

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you know, I say as a developed public servant, I know how bureaucracy can sometimes get in

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the way of speed. So please let everyone know if there are things that you need,

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if it's taken too long to get to you, okay? I appreciate that. Thank you very much.

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And I get that there's an election going on and everything, but on the same day that Kamala is

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sending camera crews and lighting equipment down to a place with no electricity to film both sides

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of her phone call about how she's a devout public servant, on that same day she shared that on her

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official ex-account, she also shared this post about how they're going to give 157 million

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dollars of additional assistance to the people of Lebanon for essential needs such as food,

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water, and shelter, which brings the total to 385 million dollars.

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This woman done come out after she just told us a few days ago that we exhausted all of our

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resources. We're so sorry. This is all we can do for you. Then she shows up to Charlotte,

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not even clothed, not even to Asheville. She shows up to Charlotte and did the

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rest of her hours. What does she do? What does she do? She sends 157 million dollars

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to Lebanon because she is worried about their protection and their security and they need

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food and water and shelter. I just think it's a little lacking in self-awareness

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to stage a phone call with the mayor of Asheville and post that on the same day you're posting

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this. This is probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen. As far as you can see,

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semi-trucks, side-to-side trucks, and they're in here cutting and they don't know these people

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from Adam. We've got trees over here, people over here, getting ready to go up here to this barn,

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this house. So we're just here to help these people here. We don't have an organization

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or anything, but they're just here. There has been some amazing and heroic scenes of bravery.

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Today my husband left to go help out. He took a truckload of supplies. He's meeting up with

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an organization there and I don't know when he will be back. People working all night long,

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building bridges and just really doing everything they can to try and help people

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in this situation. That was the scariest f***ing thing I've ever done in my life.

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Grovestone Mountain in Asheville is now f***ing unpassable. You got four days of power up there.

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I gave every single drop. I even pulled back out of my personal tank. It's a 210 gallon

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tank and I gave it everything I had. If the needle was below E when I got there and

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all the city and Ryzen Tex and even people and neighbors and stuff were like,

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there's no way you're going to make it. Mother f***ing, I made it there and back.

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And somebody posted this video of trying to get out when this was happening

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and what it looked like. And again, I just don't think most people realize this flash flooding

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happened so quickly. So quickly it went from a little bit of rain to we can't get down the

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streets that there just, there wasn't any way for people to leave. This was a lot of people saying

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they weren't getting any warning at all. They heard nothing. It was raining a little bit and then all

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of a sudden the water has risen and it's done. You're not, you're not going anywhere.

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And the mudslides you just have to see with your own eyes.

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And so you're talking about a wall of water and mud in some cases that went into people's houses

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all the way up to the ceiling. And so there are people who were swept away trying to escape in their

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cars by water or whose houses were swept away with them in it. And there were people whose

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houses filled up with this mud and they couldn't get out or their cars filled up with it

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while they were trying to escape and they couldn't get out. The count of the people who have perished

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in this is going to be difficult to tally for some time because there are a lot of people who

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were lost in this water and mud. Every single X that you see on a car structure is the sign

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of something searched. There are one, two, three vehicles here, one shed that makes four and

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countless other structures that can't even be accessed. That they just, they just haven't

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been able to get to them yet. Avery counties have as of yesterday had two fatalities but

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there's a lot more. There's several missing people that a dozen or more that we know that

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were actually saw swept away that we haven't located. So I think as the days go on this

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number is going to get drastically worse. It feels like a literal war zone right now.

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But the thing that I'm just trying to tell you everything that I'm seeing and be very

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transparent. We have seen some federal agents around the Swannanoa area starting late last night

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that I've heard of and I have seen some personally today. There are border patrol in the Swannanoa

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area along Highway 70. They're doing body recovery and I think they're kind of guarding some of

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the areas where they think that there there are more from the word that I'm hearing. They're

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putting orange X's on everything that they check. So they'll have an orange X and then they'll have a

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zero or there'll be somewhere else that there's an orange X and one had an 11 and that is the

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body count that was found inside. With Baybeam the National Guard have marked over a hundred

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bodies in a six mile stretcher river. Possible bodies just where they think they are. You

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can't see them guys and I had to explain to him something that had to be explained to me

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even as a rescuer. When I watched the National Guard and they confirmed that the smells I had

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been smelling were most likely bodies. I was like well where are they so I can get to them.

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You can't get to them. They're they're crushed in debris. They're up in trees. They're under

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sediment. They're under sand. Unfortunately it's gonna be it will be a very long time

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before you find all these people. The body count is astronomically higher

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than what we are being told. He said that they found 36 bodies in one embankment alone.

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He also said it's true that bodies are being found in trees.

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He said that looting has started and if we knew how bad it really was we would be riding in the

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woods with no way out of this water. We have multiple people including juveniles trapped.

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Are any resources available to send our way? Over. I have a 13-year-old,

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one-three-year-old in a house with no oxygen, no power. There's even multiple no one calls about

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multiple fatalities, houses, clots. I need to help getting people out of River Street. I

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still can't get them all out of here. Temple, I'm heading your way. If they don't move

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any faster we're all gonna be good. Says there are 25 families stuck. They've painted an X in a

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nearby field needing supplies. Daughter got rescued last night from the house. She grew out back.

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She's a personal school. The neighbors saw her parents were trying to get out and I told her

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to calm them. I got swept away. My kids and my mom will be coming out to the interstate. I need

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you to grab them please. Where are they at? There's a 2,000-pound propane tank coming down

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the main channel of the river just past our location. 1st Central and Fire and Search and Rescue

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on scene confirmed 2, 10, 7. Thank you. 1,100 you coming? Yes sir. You can get a hold of them all while.

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Keep all of those who have been affected in your prayers and keep all of those who are

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helping in your prayers. There are videos coming out that it has been eight days

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in some of these areas before anybody has seen any boots on their particular ground.

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Eight days. Eight days without food, without water, without power. Eight days. And a lot of people

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are saying it's not their fault that they weren't allowed to go in there. They weren't

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given orders. Days went by before any of these people were allowed to go in. So I just want

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to say thank you to everyone who suggested donating to United Cajun Navy. The things they're doing in

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the air and on the ground and they really are getting out there and helping people,

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having a big impact. But in the last couple days, since October 6th, I've been seeing video now

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of their donation sites getting rotor washed by black helicopters. The first one I saw

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was from October 6th. You had a black helicopter come in and hover over the donation site and

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then fly in real low and just blow everything all over the ground. And people are getting hurt,

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supplies are getting destroyed, and there's talk that transponders are being turned off

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so that these things cannot be tracked. And it's not the first time it's happened either now.

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There was another reporting of this happening, at least one other if not two more reports

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of the same thing. So somebody is actively working to destroy citizen donation sites that are

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being set up through these organizations to try to help people. It's one of the sickest,

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most twisted things I think I've seen yet. Make It Makes Sense, as the Cajun Navy said,

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they wrote, y'all were trying really hard to stay out of the conspiracy space,

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but some people aren't making it easy. This actually happened to a distribution site we

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supplied in Western North Carolina. Make It Makes Sense, please. And there really isn't

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any way to make that make sense without entering a conspiracy space. But you know,

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at this point guys, we really have to stop being scared of these words and these labels

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because this stuff is happening. And I can't believe I'm even about to say this after

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everything I've seen, but apparently the Connecticut National Guard is investigating,

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or at least reporting on the investigation into the Blackhawk Roter Wash incident. And they're

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saying that the initial investigation indicates the helicopter in this video belongs to the

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North Carolina National Guard and that the pilots have now been grounded until a further

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investigation can be completed. But in the meantime, what the actual f***? Any contractor,

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any car that comes through here must help the residents. You must give everything, no.

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You must help the residents, and you've got to do it. I want both of your names because I

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seriously, it's going all the way to the governor's office. We're eight days, nine days,

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post hurricane, and that was the first FEMA drop I've seen here in the Swannanoa area.

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One hero come in, and I was told that was FEMA, and that was it. Today was the first

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FEMA delivery that I've seen or I've heard of in the entire region. I went to put a couple

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of people into a hotel last night, and they have a security guard at the hotel. They said,

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oh, we're so sorry. The entire hotel has been booked for federal employees. And I was like,

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no, I have people that would just pull it out of a mountain. Hey, you've seen them turning

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people away though. Yeah, yeah, they've turned people away for the last two days.

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Two days, they've turned trucks and trucks and trucks. That's where Jackie had to come back.

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We just seen water come back down here where they just turned them around, told them no.

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If you're reading about FEMA online and wondering if they're really a pain in the tail,

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I can confirm it is true. I tried to send in a pallet of chainsaws two days ago,

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and we had to divert it somewhere away from FEMA because they wanted to confiscate.

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FEMA, those ain't your chainsaws. Western North Carolina, Asheville,

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you know, that whole area, wherever they can land and drop off supplies. And FEMA has flown in

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like 10 or more helicopters and blocked a runway here at Greenville downtown.

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Okay, here's the helicopters that are blocking one of the runways here at Greenville downtown,

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all flown in by FEMA helicopter pilots. And they're just sitting there doing nothing.

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Greenville aviation over here taken in all kind of supplies, everything that people want to drop

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off. There's a huge operation going on over here. Yesterday we ran about 30 something planes,

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and they came in and halted, FEMA came in and halted all that operation.

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Today it's awfully quiet, and we see these helicopters wind up,

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and they have a booth set up here and everything. Turns out that's FEMA.

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FEMA has shut down all the local donation operations that were going on,

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and delivering supplies, and now they're saying that they're not allowed to deliver

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any more supplies anymore. So all these people are unfortunately have all these supplies,

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but cannot take it up there. So that's our government for you. Oh, and another thing,

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those helicopters that have been sitting there, I've been sitting there since this morning.

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Haven't seen a single movement, just a bunch of impacting of important equipment and nothing

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happening. So I'm so sorry, North Carolina. We're trying to get some long-term emergency

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water to the people in North Carolina, and they're being told that they need special requirements

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from FEMA in order to enter these certain areas. And so we're trying to find the

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workarounds for that. But now everyone's heard about what's going on in the western part of

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Carolina, eastern Tennessee, Florida, Georgia. Donate. Please donate what you can. Try to

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find a nonprofit to donate to a church, local PD. A lot of those are taking donations,

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sheriff's departments. I know my department is running a bunch of stuff

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to the western part of the state to help donate. But please do not donate to FEMA.

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They are hindering a lot of what people are trying to accomplish out in the western part

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of the state. FEMA doesn't understand that these Appalachian people are built differently.

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I am very familiar with them. They are not going to stand by idly and have government

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officials tell them what to do. FEMA's playing a game of FAFO because free men don't ask for permission.

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Again, please donate and help these people out. They need us now more than ever.

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So I'm just going to stop there because so many videos, dozens upon dozens if not

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hundreds of videos are now up on social media of people saying basically the same thing. If I

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just spent hours and hours of my life, I could collect them all and probably make you half an hour

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long montage of just the same story over and over and over. But we have other things to talk about.

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I'm here with the FEMA administrator. We've been all over western North Carolina talking with

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first responders. We are grateful for the work that FEMA has done.

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So many stories like this now are coming out of the area that FEMA

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has responded by putting up a Helene rumor's website for rumor control.

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Meanwhile, the point I just want to make is all of these videos that people are making where they're

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talking about being blocked by FEMA or turned around or all these people, their handles and

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their faces are on these videos. These people are putting their names and faces behind what

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they're saying left and right all over the place. I mean that woman is a realtor in the area.

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She is well known to many people. If she's just blatantly out and out lying, her entire community

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knows her. She's a realtor. You know what I'm saying? Her name is right out there. Her face

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is out there. She's not hiding who she is making these claims. None of these people are hiding

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who they are. They're all putting their faces directly on camera and they're saying this

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is what I'm seeing. This is what is happening with FEMA. So are all of them liars? That'd be

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a really weird. That's a really bizarre phenomenon for a whole bunch of people to get together and

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put their face and their name on camera and then just blatantly lie. It doesn't prove they're not

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lying, but it'd be really weird to just have hundreds of liars all of a sudden all getting on

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camera being like, here's my name. Here's my face. And I'm just going to tell you some

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blatant lies that you can't find me later and check up on. I mean, do you see what I'm saying?

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She's sitting here telling us that go online, apply. Well, okay, A, hundreds of us still don't

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have power. People are saying they're having issues applying for the aid that they're being

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turned down because you're telling us to go online to FEMA and apply and you get immediate

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help for $750. Hi, I'm Marty and I'm with FEMA and I'm here to talk to you about the

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assistance that you can receive from FEMA. I spent a lot of talk about the $750 as your

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initial assistance. Well, that $750 is to help you with food and water and your essential needs

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right now. Well, okay, I went on FEMA. I applied and I immediately got denied. Everybody in my

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area that I've talked to, including myself who applied for the $750 assistance payment from

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FEMA has been denied. I did apply for FEMA assistance and was denied. I just want everyone

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to know that we are displaced due to Hurricane Helene from Western North Carolina. We cannot go

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home. We have no power, no food, no water, no nothing. We are spending $400 a night on a hotel

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due to price gouging in the surrounding areas because they know that people have nowhere to

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go. We applied for FEMA myself and my sister applied. My sister applied first. She got

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denied. I said, okay, let me try. I applied. We got denied. So everyone's saying FEMA is helping $750

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and by the way, that $750 wouldn't even cover two nights at this hotel. There were numerous videos

26:07.810 --> 26:15.810
of that and the local news was reporting that if victims put up a go fund me or tried to crowd

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fund themselves for what they've just been through in any way, they will not be eligible.

26:21.130 --> 26:26.210
Says survivors may not be eligible for federal assistance if they are receiving crowdfunded

26:26.210 --> 26:32.170
donations for types of assistance covered. And it says, will survivors automatically receive money

26:32.170 --> 26:39.170
when they register? No. FEMA determines eligibility on a case by case basis. So that is what is

26:39.170 --> 26:48.090
being reported. So I just want everyone to know that FEMA sucks. FEMA's here. You know what

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FEMA just told us? We can't get you a phone. I have no ID. I have no way to pay for food.

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He has no way to get gas. We're stuck. So we have to sleep in a car that's leaking

27:00.830 --> 27:05.730
with the same clothes we've had on since the. So Glenn back in Congressman Mills

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showed up to the FEMA truck they found parked I guess in the back of a parking lot

27:11.750 --> 27:19.410
somewhere in Asheville, North Carolina to ask some questions about what that's what that's about.

27:19.870 --> 27:22.510
Hey guys, good. How are you? What can I do for you?

27:22.530 --> 27:25.890
Well, just I'm I'm Glenn and this is Congressman Mills.

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Congressman Mills, how are you doing? We're just wondering what you guys are up to.

27:29.050 --> 27:34.250
Basically, yeah. And you guys got here today. We've been here two days. We got here

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yesterday. Yesterday, we didn't have any connectivity. So we took 2,800 people

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as near as we could count coming through the food distribution line and through the gas station

27:44.750 --> 27:50.070
station and handed them all these fires. We didn't have fires in our fires from here,

27:50.410 --> 27:53.830
but they could take pictures of our fire which told me to go online. They could make a phone

27:53.830 --> 27:59.830
call to have to go online just to get them in the system. These people don't have phones.

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Some of them do, but a lot of people lost everything. The app is great. The app,

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they can go on, they can upload documents or the app. So they don't need to ask questions and

28:10.370 --> 28:14.530
not stop. One of the biggest problems though is that most people don't have the ability one

28:14.530 --> 28:19.790
to even get on their phones to verify what is going on. How does people even know this

28:19.790 --> 28:24.790
location exists? So that would be the news media's job. They don't have a way to charge the phone

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even if they do have it and they definitely don't have television so that they can watch the news

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media. I don't understand how they're saying that's the media's job to tell people we're here and where

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we are. That's not FEMA's job. They don't have power out of the news media. I mean how about the

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people who, oh yeah, the FEMA assistance don't have power. The people who, oh yeah, the FEMA

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assistance don't have power. The reason I'm tossing in this Glenn Beck thing is because

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he and Congressman Mills asked basic ask questions of these people. Basic questions.

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And I swear you could put the soundtrack to the sitcom The Office underneath this interaction

29:04.630 --> 29:12.330
that they had because that's the level of competence this situation had. Okay, first of all they put

29:12.330 --> 29:18.570
their truck in a place where it's not in the main area. Mills is like, you know, isn't it a

29:18.570 --> 29:24.710
little common sense to maybe put the truck where people can freaking see it? I mean how

29:24.710 --> 29:30.530
do people know you're here? Where did we just got here? Oh, you just got here? We were here yesterday.

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Yeah. And today's our first day with this unit. Yeah. And then tomorrow we're going to move

29:36.490 --> 29:42.490
this unit up by the car wash. Yesterday we couldn't do anything besides give them the

29:42.490 --> 29:47.070
information because we didn't have any Wi-Fi. Right. I will say unless just someone who's,

29:47.190 --> 29:52.370
we got lucky enough Glenn actually spotted it before I did. But I think even having this

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vehicle more towards the front of the road where people even know that it exists

29:56.790 --> 30:01.330
for visibility with people coming by might actually. We were in a van with eight people.

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I was the only one that saw it. That's what we're going to do. That's what we got to do.

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The guy that's running the parking lot is a different guy. I didn't know that. He said

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so the car wash would be better and I was like boy that's really smart. And then they're

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talking about how it's not their job to tell people they're there. That's the

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media's job to tell people where they are. How does people even know this location exists?

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So that would be the newest media's job. They're just supposed to sit there. They're just show up,

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park their car in some place no one's looking and then fact everyone to figure it out.

30:32.830 --> 30:35.930
That would be the newest media's job to tell everyone they don't have power.

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That's basically what it sounds like. We would be surprised. You would be surprised.

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They sit in their cars to charge their phones and listen to the radio. Then he says they're

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going to go door-to-door. Those who won are either cut off in the location because they're

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still rebuilding roads, obviously, or it doesn't have power, won't know about even right where this

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truck exists or if it doesn't exist. There is no way actually. So we're DSA disaster

31:00.010 --> 31:05.750
survivors. So what we actually do, we work items like these and we actually go door-to-door.

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We go door-to-door and try to knock on every door in the county. And we go at the

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direction usually of the emergency manager because the fire chiefs are going to tell

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us where people are, where things are devastated. So we literally go door-to-door.

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Then he says, well, no, maybe you should talk to my supervisor over there or whatever.

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So when does that start? That's way above my head. You're talking to Pion Eddie.

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Yeah. You're not talking. Do you want to talk to my crew? Do you want to talk to my crew?

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Did they talk to her? She says some stuff about going door-to-door.

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We're wondering. We just asked, when do you guys go door-to-door? He was telling that.

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After we get the general stuff done, you know, we got to hit the mass people first,

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wherever the mass people are. So the mass people are here. Let's get them into the system as

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quickly as possible. Once we get the masses done. Actually go door-to-door. Then she says,

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no, we don't go door-to-door. That's not my situation. That's someone else's situation.

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We don't necessarily go door-to-door. It's not my contract anyways. There's 23 different

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contracts. Oh, I know. I understand how the bureaucratic levels of departments work.

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I mean, it's just like this bumbling clown show of ridiculous nonsense. I mean,

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but they got to make sure and sign people up and get them into the system. Make them apply.

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Make them prove everything because, you know, we wouldn't want fraud. And I'm sure all of

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these people, as soon as they saw the giant wall of water and mud rushing at them full blast

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with almost no warning, I'm sure the first thing they did was go grab every important document they

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have that FEMA is going to require for them to sign up for this process. I'm sure they went and did

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that. I'm sure every single person who was involved in this had all of that just on their

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person already. They probably just carry that around with them all the time like you do. Actually

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go door-to-door. We go door-to-door. Literally go door-to-door. Then we start going door-to-

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door. We don't necessarily go door-to-door. Actually, you know what? No. I think my

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favorite clip of this interaction is when she says, well, we're coming in from Charlotte

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and we're going to start around nine, 10 o'clock, but we got to get out of here by five because,

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you know, we start tearing down. We got to go home. We got, we got lives to live and things to do.

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And okay. So that's where we're going to be set up tomorrow. And we should be doing

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registrations. Well, we'll be here between nine and 10. We're all coming in from Charlotte.

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He'll be here a little bit earlier. And then we'll start tearing down

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about five o'clock so that we can get out of here. Great. Other people are going to be sleeping in

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their car tonight, but whatever. You know, not my problem. Just I don't, what is this joke?

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Because it's a sick joke. Okay, so I need to fill out a form. I need to scan a flyer. Yeah. How

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do I know this exists? Oh, the local media. Okay. Well, they don't have power. Yeah.

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They might not have a vehicle. Right. So I saw a lot of them washed away. That's right.

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So if you're a victim of a disaster, better make sure that happens between nine and five because,

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you know, they got things to do. They got lives to live. They got to come all the way from Charlotte.

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How sad is it to get your ass so owned that a congressman comes down and give you

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literally the most obvious advice ever uttered about how to do your own job.

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This vehicle more towards the front of the road where people even know that it exists.

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Maybe you want to put the truck where people can see it. I was like, boy, that's really smart.

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I am not saying there aren't some good people in that age because every place has good people,

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but this, this is a very bad look. And I'm telling you right now, this was not planned.

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They did this to themselves. These are basic questions that they should be able to easily

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answer. I mean, this is just unbelievably mind numbingly stupid. Okay. And the longer I watch

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it, the more I feel like it is sucking IQ points out of my brain. I think if everyone found

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out how much money these people make to do this job or not do it or sort of do it or whatever you

35:21.510 --> 35:27.890
call this interaction, they'd probably want to punch themselves in the face. We lost everything,

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family, friends, homes, our jobs, everything, our animals. We have nothing. We got family

35:34.310 --> 35:41.490
members floating down the river. And amidst all of this, you had the FEMA director go on

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national television and whine about her agency being criticized.

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So much is going viral online as well. One user suggested yesterday that a militia should go

35:53.010 --> 35:58.290
against FEMA. It got more than half a million views. What kind of impact has this had on the

35:58.290 --> 36:06.450
recovery effort? It has a tremendous impact on the comfort level of our own employees to

36:06.450 --> 36:12.010
be able to go out there. But it's also demoralizing to all of the first responders that have been

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out there in their communities, helping people, FEMA staff, volunteers, the private sector that

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are working side by side with local officials to go out and help people. I need to make sure I

36:24.070 --> 36:28.510
can get the resources to where they needed. And when you have this dangerous rhetoric,

36:28.610 --> 36:33.350
like you're hearing, it creates fear in our own employees. And we need to make sure

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we're getting help to the people who need it. Because there's not enough victims on the ground

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right now. She's got to go ahead and make them be the victim. These people are on f***ing

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believable. She is right about one thing though, which I posted earlier. And that's

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she should make sure she can get the resources to people who need it because it's

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being reported that they can't go around road closed signs. So, you know, they're not

37:00.630 --> 37:05.830
going door to door. We don't necessarily go door to door. A lot of people don't have doors.

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And they're not going to get to a person if it requires anything. And by the way,

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when I posted this clip of the FEMA director, somebody came in and said, this is crazy.

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Nobody in those areas was complaining about FEMA. They were waiting desperately for their

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help. They did not complain until it was once again, like always, like we're all used to by now,

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after years and years of watching this happen to people, disaster after disaster after disaster,

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until FEMA's delayed response, parent inaction in the worst hit areas, poor strategy and lack

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of connection to reality for victims needs during and after a disaster became apparent.

37:51.130 --> 37:56.690
You could copy that comment that he just left and you could paste it over every single

37:56.690 --> 38:04.610
disaster that has happened this entire century so far. It's not going to get better. This isn't

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getting better. This is like the slow motion Hindenburg of agencies. And you know, if it was

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just some little whatever agency, paperwork reflects the demands of our citizens for service

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from their government. They just push paper around in pneumatic tubes all day like the

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Brazil movie. That would be one thing, but it's not. It's the agency that's supposed to deal

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with emergency management. And what they've had in this particular case is their asses handed

38:38.910 --> 38:43.950
to them on a platter by civilians who are doing all of the heavy lifting.

38:47.910 --> 38:54.350
And the reason FEMA is so universally lowed is because every single time there's a disaster

38:54.350 --> 39:00.790
going on for forever now, stories come out afterwards about evidence of fraud. Like for

39:00.790 --> 39:06.470
example, during Hurricane Sandy, 60 minutes did a whole thing on it. FEMA evidence of fraud

39:06.470 --> 39:11.010
in Hurricane Sandy reports. Thousands of people who've been denied flood insurance claims for homes

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destroyed by Hurricane Sandy have been crying fraud. Now the executive in charge of the federal

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emergency management agency's insurance program tells 60 minutes he has seen evidence of fraud

39:21.470 --> 39:30.170
in reports used to deny them their insurance payouts. In 2018, in an internal report which

39:30.170 --> 39:35.050
has now been deleted off of FEMA's website, I had to go through archive.org to get it.

39:35.050 --> 39:41.870
The agency admitted disaster relief failures in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, including the

39:41.870 --> 39:47.810
rerouting of Puerto Rico's supplies to the Virgin Islands leaving their stash of emergency supplies

39:47.810 --> 39:53.830
dangerously low and admitting that because they decided to take on a more direct role

39:53.830 --> 39:58.990
in coordinating supply delivery instead of letting local agencies handle it,

39:59.110 --> 40:03.970
that it actually caused delays, that they had challenges tracking the resources.

40:04.350 --> 40:08.490
And if that sounds familiar to you, it might be because if you'll recall,

40:09.030 --> 40:17.290
in 2020, they ended up finding a massive amount of supplies locked up in a 43,000 square foot

40:17.290 --> 40:23.530
warehouse in Puerto Rico where they'd just been sitting there untouched ever since Hurricane

40:23.530 --> 40:33.950
Maria hit in September 2017. And we all remember after Hurricane

40:33.950 --> 40:38.550
Katrina, when George W. Bush said, you're doing a heck of a job, Brownie, which

40:38.550 --> 40:43.090
and Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job, became the sarcastic catchphrase for FEMA's

40:43.090 --> 40:48.990
botched response to Hurricane Katrina. I think we all remember that one. It's gone down in history.

40:49.430 --> 40:50.750
And Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.

40:51.230 --> 40:52.610
Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.

40:53.430 --> 40:55.030
The FEMA director is working 24.

40:55.770 --> 40:57.030
Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.

40:57.150 --> 40:58.450
Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.

40:58.750 --> 41:02.150
And there are headlines where they claim they've learned from their failure.

41:02.150 --> 41:07.910
But you know what? No, I don't think they have. And to show you how much they haven't

41:07.910 --> 41:15.490
learned from their failure, it has now come out that FEMA is literally sitting on billions of

41:15.490 --> 41:22.070
dollars in unused disaster funds that are just sitting in a government account,

41:22.550 --> 41:29.650
not being used for anything. And they won't release those funds to be used for this.

41:30.090 --> 41:35.090
This actually came out buried in an August report from the Department of Homeland Security's

41:35.090 --> 41:42.230
Office of Inspector General, which found 8.3 billion dollars that's been sitting there for

41:42.230 --> 41:48.250
disasters that were declared in 2012 or earlier. And as real clear investigations reports,

41:49.030 --> 41:53.310
this is an age old game that happens and it doesn't matter what administration it is.

41:53.530 --> 41:56.530
But this audit actually came out just a couple of months ago showing that they

41:56.530 --> 42:01.930
have 8 billion dollars in funding basically lying around not being used because they've

42:01.930 --> 42:07.550
already promised it to victims of storms from 2012 or earlier. So you've got storms like Hurricane

42:07.550 --> 42:13.110
Katrina, Hurricane Sandy caused a ton of damage. Now that money still hasn't been spent because

42:13.110 --> 42:17.690
the construction projects to recover from those hurricanes have been delayed so many years and

42:17.690 --> 42:21.370
FEMA is not enforcing those deadlines. So they set the deadline originally, they said,

42:21.370 --> 42:27.230
okay, you have until say 2020, 2021 to spend this money, use it to recover from the storm.

42:27.390 --> 42:31.610
When that doesn't happen, instead of saying, okay, too bad, you took too long,

42:31.630 --> 42:36.530
now we're going to take the money away. They just award deadline extensions based on what

42:36.530 --> 42:41.730
auditors say working for FEMA are subjective criteria. So they say, okay, now you can

42:41.730 --> 42:45.930
have until 2030 to spend this money, it's fine. So it just keeps sitting around in these

42:45.930 --> 42:50.090
government bank accounts, not being used to help anyone, not going towards a lien,

42:50.490 --> 42:56.970
just a number on a piece of paper pretty much. So when Majorca said they're expecting another

42:56.970 --> 43:03.130
hurricane and don't have the funds to cover it, that's actually not the case. They do.

43:03.650 --> 43:09.170
They're just not using them. And Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job. And yet

43:09.170 --> 43:14.850
we have the FEMA director going on TV whining about how they're the victim.

43:14.850 --> 43:20.210
It has a tremendous impact on the comfort level of our own employees.

43:21.750 --> 43:32.010
And by the way, guys, this agency gets $30 billion a year, okay? $30 billion a year.

43:32.690 --> 43:40.810
What for? We lost everything, family, friends, homes, our jobs, everything, our animals.

43:40.810 --> 43:47.190
We have nothing. You know what FEMA just told us. And so at the same time, you have Americans on

43:47.190 --> 43:53.690
the ground affected by this who don't have an ability to go online or download their app or

43:53.690 --> 43:57.710
they have to take pictures with their phone of the flyer to even get the information.

43:58.370 --> 44:05.410
At the same time, this administration is announcing $157 million more bringing the

44:05.410 --> 44:10.330
total to $385 million specifically for essential needs such as food, water, and shelter to

44:10.330 --> 44:14.630
the people of Lebanon. Rightfully, you have people on the ground in North Carolina asking,

44:15.410 --> 44:20.230
are they going to make those people go online and download an app to apply? Are we going to make

44:20.230 --> 44:25.650
them apply? Are we going to make them go online and fill out applications for this assistance?

44:26.270 --> 44:32.250
No, no, not. Still have to go through and verify the damages that have been done, you know,

44:32.330 --> 44:35.910
add that you own the house and that you are the renter. So that you can limit the amount

44:35.910 --> 44:40.230
of fraud we've seen in other areas. We've got it. Thank you very much.

44:40.310 --> 44:47.810
Absolutely. And you want to know why we, the real American people, don't like you.

44:48.910 --> 44:54.570
We're saying the money is needed for this crisis is being diverted to migrants.

44:55.070 --> 44:57.250
What a ridiculous thing to say. It's not true.

44:57.790 --> 45:04.690
We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting

45:04.690 --> 45:09.710
another hurricane hitting. We do not have the funds. FEMA does not have the funds

45:09.710 --> 45:16.750
to make it through the season. And now with the Biden era, FEMA has taken on new unprecedented

45:16.750 --> 45:22.670
roles without any clear constitutional basis and well outside of the popular conception

45:22.670 --> 45:28.910
of their agency's purpose. A key example of this is the Biden administration's Justice 40

45:28.910 --> 45:35.270
initiative operated within FEMA as the BRIC, Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities

45:35.270 --> 45:41.210
Grant Program, has already funneled billions of dollars into what is basically an embarrassing

45:41.210 --> 45:46.790
misuse of public funds. And sure, that headline came out of Fox News, who obviously opposed the

45:46.790 --> 45:52.110
Biden administration. But come on. I mean, look at what is happening. It reeks of mission creep.

45:52.110 --> 45:59.390
The Biden administration's Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, their 2022 to 2026

45:59.390 --> 46:06.450
strategic plan outlines three ambitious goals with the first focusing on equity as the death toll

46:06.450 --> 46:12.810
from the hurricane Helene surpasses 100. That was several days ago. FEMA's first goal under

46:12.810 --> 46:18.070
this initiative is to instill equity as the foundation of emergency management.

46:18.070 --> 46:23.710
The second is to lead the whole community in climate resilience. And the third aims to promote

46:23.710 --> 46:33.010
and sustain a ready FEMA and a prepared nation. Third, third is the readiness of FEMA and a

46:33.010 --> 46:39.130
prepared nation. The third is actual disaster relief response. The first and second agenda

46:39.130 --> 46:46.530
points are purely political equity along some kind of identity politics basis and climate change

46:46.530 --> 46:52.230
climate change everything through the lens of climate change actual disaster response. Third,

46:52.430 --> 46:57.410
maybe when you're done with that, by the way, it's a job that they can never finish. Goal one,

46:57.630 --> 47:03.630
instill equity as a foundation of emergency management. Yes, the actual direct disaster

47:03.630 --> 47:09.590
relief appears to be downgraded next to FEMA's goals of funding selected quote, disadvantaged

47:09.590 --> 47:17.230
communities based on qualifiers such as susceptibility to climate change and socioeconomic

47:17.230 --> 47:24.530
and identity politics, including race and gender. This stuff over the places who actually need

47:24.530 --> 47:30.390
direct relief after they actually suffered weather events and natural disasters after

47:30.390 --> 47:34.870
something actually happened. The places where something actually happened have been put in the

47:34.870 --> 47:42.950
back seat as this agency and this administration have focused on ideological heavily politicized

47:42.950 --> 47:49.230
goals instead of actually just responding to the emergencies they were set up to deal with.

47:49.550 --> 47:53.990
It's incredible. It is embarrassing. I can't believe I'm reading this stuff. I kind of can,

47:54.190 --> 48:00.990
but apparently, based on these documents, FEMA's primary goal is apparently a highly

48:00.990 --> 48:07.270
politicized picking of winners and losers under this misguided and contradictory notion of equity.

48:07.650 --> 48:13.250
They're using skewed politicized data to choose quote, disadvantaged communities

48:14.010 --> 48:20.290
in the name of equity. It's not equal. It's not fair. It's not merit based. They're picking

48:20.290 --> 48:25.490
winners and losers, but they call it equity, whatever, against its core mission of disaster

48:25.490 --> 48:31.610
response, which had apparently back seated as much as 40% of FEMA's budget goes to communities that

48:31.610 --> 48:38.730
have been classified as eligible for funds based on highly dubious criteria that miss the point of

48:38.730 --> 48:44.630
helping those communities that have actually suffered emergency disasters. Why else do you exist,

48:44.770 --> 48:50.990
FEMA communities not designated as quote, disadvantaged, don't qualify for these programs

48:50.990 --> 48:56.010
so they don't get the money in spite of what they may have suffered in spite of whatever catastrophes

48:56.010 --> 49:01.790
that FEMA would be really any kind of justified and proper and in line with their mission

49:01.790 --> 49:07.770
and using taxpayer dollars to address. I browse a little bit there in North Carolina,

49:08.350 --> 49:12.450
some of the areas in Texas that I'm familiar with, a little bit around the country,

49:12.870 --> 49:18.790
different places where they've applied a map, a so-called climate and economic justice

49:18.790 --> 49:26.390
screening tool that breaks down areas. Each city might have several dozen census data kind of mapped

49:26.390 --> 49:33.550
areas where they have shaded off areas designated as disadvantaged and marked others as not

49:33.550 --> 49:38.830
disadvantaged. And at best, if they're even doing what they claim to do, they're addressing

49:38.830 --> 49:44.090
systemic problems that are hardly the purview of the federal emergency management agency,

49:44.090 --> 49:50.130
however you want to slice it, but they're carving up a billion dollars a year of federal money

49:50.810 --> 49:56.570
and sending it to very selective, very picking of winners and losers communities that have applied

49:56.570 --> 50:02.430
for these funds. It's just categorically full. No, Biden did not take FEMA relief money

50:02.430 --> 50:08.870
to use on migrants. Funding is also available through FEMA's Emergency Food and Shelter

50:08.870 --> 50:13.990
Program to eligible local governments and non-for-profit organizations upon request

50:14.400 --> 50:20.510
to support humanitarian relief for migrants. And that OBegotten policy pales in comparison to the

50:20.510 --> 50:26.870
even more controversial FEMA policies under the Biden administration and funding and fostering

50:26.870 --> 50:32.790
an unprecedented, unmitigated wave of undocumented immigrants, illegal immigrants, whatever

50:32.790 --> 50:37.270
you want to call them through the Shelter and Services Program. Congress allocated

50:37.270 --> 50:42.570
roughly a billion dollars for migrant assistance. The Shelter and Service Program helps distribute

50:42.570 --> 50:47.230
funds to help communities provide services to migrants, such as temporary shelter, food,

50:47.590 --> 50:52.770
and urgent medical care. And FEMA says on its website that disaster relief money has not

50:52.770 --> 50:58.090
been diverted for other non-disaster related efforts. This is Savannah Hernandez in Brunswick,

50:58.170 --> 51:03.830
Maine reporting to you from the apartments where migrants are getting their rent paid for

51:03.830 --> 51:09.030
up to two years. Now, I wanted to give you guys a first inside look at these units.

51:09.410 --> 51:13.770
The migrants shared with us that they come furnished, so they have a flat screen TV in there,

51:13.970 --> 51:18.410
couches, tables and chairs. We also asked them as well, hey, are you paying utilities here?

51:18.970 --> 51:22.950
They shared with us that no, they do not have a water bill. They do not have an electricity

51:22.950 --> 51:28.330
bill. We don't pay anything. Because there is a housing crisis going on currently for

51:28.330 --> 51:32.670
residents, and these buildings were initially created for main residents, but then it was

51:32.670 --> 51:38.170
decided that homeless migrants would be living here. Now, as an American, you can rent out one of

51:38.170 --> 51:44.730
these units, but a one bedroom is going to run you about $1,800 and a two bedroom is going to run

51:44.730 --> 51:52.170
you about $2,300. This is the same county that has received FEMA funding from that same program

51:52.770 --> 51:57.430
that spent almost a billion dollars through the fiscal year of 2023 and 2024

51:57.430 --> 52:00.990
on sheltering illegal immigrants throughout the United States of America.

52:00.990 --> 52:06.570
And then float in funds to handle these people that weren't really supposed to be coming in,

52:06.630 --> 52:10.790
but they knew they were coming and they just opened the gates for it.

52:10.910 --> 52:20.690
FEMA said, and you can take this as a direct quote, said that they are too tied up at the border

52:21.590 --> 52:29.730
to send any more representatives. Yeah, at the border. So anyhow, I guess border control

52:29.730 --> 52:36.790
Trump's whatever's going on here. That program, shelter and services has been jointly operated

52:36.790 --> 52:41.490
in the Biden administration by FEMA and the Customs and Border Patrol, and camera showed

52:41.490 --> 52:46.470
waves of those immigrants who are being directly ushered into the country by Customs and Border

52:46.470 --> 52:50.590
Protection officers who've been dicks to me every time I've been at the border,

52:51.090 --> 52:55.310
you know, and they're letting them in and high fiving. It says if they're

52:55.310 --> 53:00.930
winking at these people that they're elevating the perception of this problem in anticipation of

53:00.930 --> 53:06.550
a response that's coming. Of course, these people are human beings. I'm very sympathetic to the

53:06.550 --> 53:12.470
humanistic nature of this, but there's a pre planned response going on here. There's another

53:12.470 --> 53:17.950
level of the surveillance society solution that's going to further erode freedoms for

53:17.950 --> 53:22.250
all Americans, including newly immigrated, including those who've been here since

53:22.250 --> 53:28.930
the founding of the country. In this issue that's been heavily promoted on TV and heavily politicized,

53:29.070 --> 53:34.730
it's been riling up the Trump right on the basis of this issue blatantly, flamboyantly

53:34.730 --> 53:40.330
exacerbated under the Biden administration. And it's cheering on what is soon to be the

53:40.330 --> 53:47.130
implementation of a biometric ID check at the border, a Trump policy for digital control overlay

53:47.130 --> 53:51.510
that's been planned all along. And really it didn't originate with Trump either. It goes back

53:51.510 --> 53:57.130
at least to the Clinton and Bush administrations. I guess it depends on when the actual technology

53:57.130 --> 54:02.390
was thought of. These are some of the deeper things going on as this immediate emergency

54:02.390 --> 54:09.690
takes place. You look at the absurd policies, the waste of money and resources and the contempt

54:09.690 --> 54:15.110
for people. This is the kind of context that comes to mind when we learn here in the middle

54:15.110 --> 54:20.950
of hurricane season that FEMA has run out of money again for the second year in a row.

54:21.290 --> 54:25.690
What are they spending their money on? Stuff that's going to make people really pissed off,

54:25.890 --> 54:31.090
and should. The Biden administration's FEMA equity plan faces backlash amid historic

54:31.090 --> 54:36.130
hurricane damage. What do you expect? What do you expect? So it's not just Fox News,

54:36.210 --> 54:41.490
actually. A shameful embarrassment as people in need in North Carolina and the Southern

54:41.490 --> 54:46.570
States on the coast still have been missing, have been unable to obtain food and water.

54:47.070 --> 54:53.110
We have got to rebuild everything. And are now enduring uninsured losses of their home. Stuff

54:53.110 --> 55:00.590
that isn't going to be covered. My uncle has lived in St. Pete, Florida for his entire adult life.

55:01.030 --> 55:04.050
So quite some time. He's 73 years old. He actually worked for the city

55:04.630 --> 55:09.830
in public transit for 20 years. Home was completely destroyed in Helene. He had evacuated,

55:09.830 --> 55:14.850
did what he was supposed to do. He's up in a hotel. And paying for the hotel himself

55:14.850 --> 55:20.110
comes back to his home and it's gutted. Basically, all his possessions are gone.

55:20.510 --> 55:24.530
The home is uninhabitable. FEMA comes in. They're there for five minutes. They didn't even go

55:24.530 --> 55:28.690
through the whole home. They tell him it'll be eight to 10 business days before you hear

55:28.690 --> 55:31.750
anything. We're going to go back and look at everything. We'll let you know. All right,

55:31.790 --> 55:36.370
cool. He gets an email this morning with the results of what FEMA is going to give to him.

55:36.370 --> 55:43.230
My uncle, and a lifelong American citizen, good, hard-working, salt-of-the-earth kind of fella,

55:44.270 --> 55:50.970
guess how much they're going to give him? $2,600. The confusion of refusing help

55:50.970 --> 55:57.750
from local people, from local organizations, when the agency cries for more money, money and power,

55:58.250 --> 56:02.930
that is the money and power under the pretense that it intends to help the communities of

56:02.930 --> 56:08.910
this country. What is it actually doing? And by the way, this is money that the federal government

56:08.910 --> 56:14.430
is shoveling towards them under the pretense that this agency actually intends to help the

56:14.430 --> 56:19.050
communities of this country. And that the reason they're not helping is because of lack of money.

56:19.250 --> 56:21.950
But when they're actually on the ground, how do they actually behave?

56:22.190 --> 56:25.930
And Governor, as you and I talked to President Biden and Vice President Harris,

56:26.250 --> 56:30.670
they have committed that we will be here to provide any resource you need

56:30.670 --> 56:36.350
until all of their needs are met. I don't know. I guess it depends if you just believe some kind

56:36.350 --> 56:40.610
of straightforward mainstream account or if you try to actually look at what's going on.

56:41.190 --> 56:47.710
Yeah. An American citizen is worth $2,600 to our government.

56:48.930 --> 56:54.070
FEMA will continue to ask for immediate needs funding and they'll pretty much get it. I

56:54.070 --> 56:59.630
don't think they've ever been refused. But that's only whenever and wherever specifically

56:59.630 --> 57:05.250
county by county that the president officially declares an emergency and some of the places hit

57:05.250 --> 57:10.870
by this hurricane were not in those declarations, by the way. This is the context in which Congress

57:10.870 --> 57:17.230
has set up FEMA for failure. They've set them up to fail with one side trying to defund them

57:17.230 --> 57:23.770
and the other trying to expand their powers and spending into ridiculous unrelated untenable

57:23.770 --> 57:30.890
creeping mission areas, squabbles and funding fights over extremes in position politicized to

57:30.890 --> 57:37.630
people's detriment dysfunctional in so many ways. But they're also playing with our sense of reality

57:37.630 --> 57:43.650
and try to interfere with our ability to question things and toy with our sense of whether or

57:43.650 --> 57:49.510
not we're imagining things. President Biden is fond of saying show me your budget and I will

57:49.510 --> 57:55.710
tell you what you value. If he's got money for people in Lebanon right now without Congress having

57:55.710 --> 58:00.390
to come back, what does it say about his values? There's not enough money right now for people in

58:00.390 --> 58:06.930
North Carolina. That's not misinformation. Wait, no, that is your whole premise of the question

58:06.930 --> 58:12.990
is misinformation, sir. What you don't, yes, yes, it's misinformation. I just mentioned

58:12.990 --> 58:18.570
I just mentioned to you that we provided more than $200 million to folks who are

58:18.570 --> 58:23.370
impacted in the area and I just shared with you that people are deciding not to,

58:24.150 --> 58:28.230
people are deciding not to, not to. President Biden has heard in Congress that there's not

58:28.230 --> 58:31.550
enough money to help people in North Carolina. We're talking about the SBA disaster loan.

58:31.690 --> 58:35.270
That's money for people in North Carolina. And that's important and people in North Carolina

58:35.270 --> 58:41.270
need that. Wait, this is nothing new. Peter, this is nothing new. Congress comes together,

58:41.590 --> 58:48.070
they provide money, millions of dollars for disaster relief. We're asking them to do the job

58:48.070 --> 58:55.350
that they have been doing for some time. The president's letter is not misinformation. Would

58:55.350 --> 59:00.670
you agree? No, the way you're asking me the question is misinformation. There is money that we are

59:00.670 --> 59:06.350
allocating to the impacted areas and there's money there to help people who truly need it.

59:06.430 --> 59:13.130
There are survivors who need the funding, who need the funding. And it's there. What's happening

59:13.130 --> 59:20.090
is outrageous. What's happening is so infuriating and contemptible and it's happened before and

59:20.090 --> 59:26.210
it's going to happen again. It looks like it might be happening right now because things are not set

59:26.210 --> 59:29.950
up in a way that they could be called into account. You can't call out these things with

59:29.950 --> 59:35.250
the system they've set up. They've built in a protection for their lives. They've built in

59:35.250 --> 59:40.410
the inability for regular people to question what's happening. And FEMA and the federal

59:40.410 --> 59:46.050
government are delivering a major disappointment and failure in response to this emergency.

59:46.570 --> 59:51.970
Perhaps that's to be expected at this point. I've often wondered if they did nothing at all if

59:51.970 --> 59:57.210
it wouldn't be better sometimes. FEMA is relatively recent as federal agencies go,

59:57.810 --> 01:00:01.950
though disasters are certainly not new nor government mismanagement of them.

01:00:02.570 --> 01:00:08.230
It was only formed in 1979 towards the end of the Carter era. But since then a whole

01:00:08.230 --> 01:00:13.290
new era has come with the Bush years and the Patriot Act combining FEMA and dozens of other

01:00:13.290 --> 01:00:19.210
agencies under the Homeland Security umbrella. If you see something suspicious, say something

01:00:19.210 --> 01:00:25.450
immediately. A meta federal agency formed that for a time was almost beyond questioning.

01:00:25.950 --> 01:00:28.890
Here somebody in your department could have, should have or would have known

01:00:29.630 --> 01:00:35.150
about the operation. Representative, we have hundreds of operations and thousands of

01:00:35.150 --> 01:00:41.410
agents on a daily basis. So, but not beyond embarrassment. Hurricane Katrina was a major

01:00:41.410 --> 01:00:46.590
disaster, obviously, that the New Orleans community will probably never quite move on from.

01:00:47.050 --> 01:00:53.070
And the rest of the public mind will only just gradually forget. The disastrous response cost a

01:00:53.070 --> 01:00:58.890
great deal of lives and was very revealing of what FEMA is capable of. FEMA's true nature.

01:00:59.170 --> 01:01:03.250
Even after the failed levies and the gun confiscation. We'll be able to be armed.

01:01:03.250 --> 01:01:07.990
We'll take all weapons. Police officers shooting victims trying to cross the

01:01:07.990 --> 01:01:14.190
bridge to reach safety. The inhuman things that happened at the Superdome. Remember that later

01:01:14.190 --> 01:01:19.530
once everything had settled and dislocated people were living in FEMA trailers that were

01:01:19.530 --> 01:01:25.590
provided for the victims. That those in turn the trailers themselves paid for by federal

01:01:25.590 --> 01:01:30.510
dollars to relieve people in need. That those turned out to be making people sick

01:01:30.510 --> 01:01:34.230
in of themselves because of the toxic stuff inside those trailers.

01:01:35.390 --> 01:01:42.870
Formaldehyde is an off-gassing product of I think the particle board and probably some of the other

01:01:44.550 --> 01:01:50.330
synthetic parts of the trailer. Is this incompetence? Is it what is really going on?

01:01:50.910 --> 01:01:56.130
Yeah. How much in disbelief should we be that that happened? What are the odds? I don't know.

01:01:56.130 --> 01:02:00.890
FEMA's inhumane mismanagement was typical of government on too big of a scale.

01:02:01.350 --> 01:02:04.130
Local response teams and community churches and charities

01:02:04.130 --> 01:02:08.650
were much more humane and much better at addressing people's needs because

01:02:09.170 --> 01:02:14.050
they're very close to average people. They're on the ground. They're not at the top of some

01:02:14.050 --> 01:02:20.050
hierarchy. We said to how I see it. The topic itself of Katrina turned into a nested

01:02:20.050 --> 01:02:26.670
tesseract of corruption and neglect. So much so that post-Katrina legislation played upon this

01:02:26.670 --> 01:02:33.830
complex outrage in the form of legislative reform. For better? For worse? Well, have things gotten

01:02:33.830 --> 01:02:40.510
better? Besides the agency's draconian service to the Homeland Security and Patriot Act fascist

01:02:40.510 --> 01:02:46.450
surveillance state overlay, which was very significant until it became basically normalized

01:02:47.090 --> 01:02:51.310
with the generation of Americans who learned to accept and cooperate with it,

01:02:51.750 --> 01:02:56.530
the Katrina debacle revealed the nature of big government at the very point at which

01:02:56.530 --> 01:03:01.890
average Americans who find themselves on the path of disaster more or less by happenstance

01:03:01.890 --> 01:03:07.730
when those people are at their most vulnerable. It's the point of transaction for common

01:03:07.730 --> 01:03:12.330
people with the federal government when they're actually in need and the confrontation,

01:03:12.330 --> 01:03:18.610
the clash between the image of good government and the American way is clearly devastating for many.

01:03:19.310 --> 01:03:24.070
Disillusionment, the reality of big government control. It's almost too much to believe,

01:03:24.510 --> 01:03:30.270
but it keeps happening. As a general observation, though many human individuals who are people

01:03:30.730 --> 01:03:36.330
work on behalf of the feds. The feds as an institution are not there in the spirit of

01:03:36.330 --> 01:03:41.730
helping people as a community or as individuals with personal sanctimony and self-respect.

01:03:41.730 --> 01:03:47.710
The fed machine can't compute or think that way. It's a fundamentally different creature

01:03:47.710 --> 01:03:53.790
than the people who comprise our nation. This entity who only knows its own terms of power

01:03:53.790 --> 01:04:00.650
tends naturally to assert control, like it's a turf war, work in inefficiencies at best

01:04:00.650 --> 01:04:06.490
and negligent cruelties towards its darker ends. This system only knows assistance on

01:04:06.490 --> 01:04:11.950
their own terms. The bureaucratic machine seeks its own continuation of power and has

01:04:11.950 --> 01:04:17.710
an appetite to ever increase its budget, scope, and jurisdiction. Plenty of people choose to

01:04:17.710 --> 01:04:21.130
remain ignorant of this nature, but it's to their own peril.

01:04:23.490 --> 01:04:28.270
At a minimum, are they giving assistance in a timely or reasonable manner?

01:04:28.810 --> 01:04:33.150
While we contemplate what else they might be doing, we have to ask,

01:04:33.150 --> 01:04:38.510
why is the immediate rescue element so often hampered by bureaucratic delay,

01:04:38.830 --> 01:04:44.810
red tape, and jurisdictional dispute? If there's one maxim that's held true in US history,

01:04:45.090 --> 01:04:49.870
in spite of changing times and attitudes, it's that the federal government rules by

01:04:49.870 --> 01:04:56.710
emergency, problem, reaction, solution, never, never let a good crisis go to waste.

01:04:56.710 --> 01:05:04.070
Maybe that sounds too esoteric. Disasters plus crisis generate opportunities to govern.

01:05:04.770 --> 01:05:11.030
Trastic times call for drastic measures and new powers can be cultivated and engineered

01:05:11.030 --> 01:05:17.490
like a carefully planted crop. I think you all know that I've always felt the

01:05:18.310 --> 01:05:24.370
nine most terrifying words in the English language are, I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

01:05:26.890 --> 01:05:33.090
I think people always want flashy conspiracy theories, something sexy, something Hollywood can

01:05:33.090 --> 01:05:38.030
make a blockbuster out of, but if you ever talk to people like Katharine Austin-Fitz, you'll find

01:05:38.030 --> 01:05:43.630
out right away that what's really going on is burying people in some kind of financial minutia

01:05:43.630 --> 01:05:48.630
that most people fall asleep listening to so they don't hear the punchline when it comes.

01:05:49.090 --> 01:05:53.570
Scott Richardson and Meta Gatschenberger took a few seconds to take in what's left

01:05:53.570 --> 01:06:00.550
of the place they called home for 25 years. And unbelievably, or believably, I guess depending

01:06:00.550 --> 01:06:07.710
on how much of a capacity you have to be shocked anymore, in the wake of Hurricane Helene, you have

01:06:07.710 --> 01:06:13.230
insurance companies calling people up who have had their house slide off a mountain

01:06:13.230 --> 01:06:17.130
and cancel their homeowner's insurance policies on them.

01:06:17.130 --> 01:06:22.130
Couples Home is one of thousands destroyed by a landslide caused by Hurricane Helene,

01:06:22.270 --> 01:06:27.990
so just days after the storm hit, their insurance company canceled their homeowner's policy despite

01:06:27.990 --> 01:06:32.910
the couple not having landslide coverage. And earlier this year, the North Carolina Rate

01:06:32.910 --> 01:06:38.810
Bureau proposed a massive hike in people's homeowner's insurance rates to an average

01:06:38.810 --> 01:06:46.470
tune of 42.2%. On the coastal areas, all the way up to 99.4% in places.

01:06:47.170 --> 01:06:50.810
Insurance for North Carolina homeowners could be going up. Insurance companies are asking

01:06:50.810 --> 01:06:56.150
the state to let them raise rates by an average of 42%. That's how much the state's average

01:06:56.150 --> 01:07:01.050
homeowner's insurance increase would go up if it gets approved. At today's public forum,

01:07:01.170 --> 01:07:06.130
several people spoke out against the proposed hike, with many saying that's outrageous.

01:07:06.690 --> 01:07:10.290
This planned hike is nothing short of bonkers.

01:07:10.530 --> 01:07:13.810
We find this proposed increase by the rate board to be outrageous.

01:07:14.110 --> 01:07:17.470
We've heard words like devastating from the public comment.

01:07:17.630 --> 01:07:21.350
Do you all realistically think the customers can afford increases that high?

01:07:21.550 --> 01:07:24.550
That's not really for us to decide. I mean, that's what the commissioner does.

01:07:24.910 --> 01:07:30.530
But it's regulated in North Carolina, so the insurance commissioner rejected it,

01:07:30.530 --> 01:07:34.910
saying the proposed rates were excessive and unfairly discriminatory.

01:07:35.350 --> 01:07:40.630
But that rejection triggered a judicial hearing process on it. So it's not final.

01:07:41.010 --> 01:07:43.790
Now they have to have a hearing, which is open to the public.

01:07:44.110 --> 01:07:47.390
However, it's been scheduled for October 7th for months.

01:07:48.010 --> 01:07:53.390
And they did not reschedule it after Haleen, which means a whole lot of the people who

01:07:53.390 --> 01:07:57.190
were probably going to go attend that are not going to be able to now.

01:07:57.190 --> 01:08:00.350
This made people extremely angry when this was announced.

01:08:00.570 --> 01:08:07.310
They had 24,000 emails of people who were upset and hundreds of people who wrote in

01:08:07.310 --> 01:08:11.410
and actually mailed something physically to express their concern

01:08:11.410 --> 01:08:16.610
over not being able to afford these hikes. So they knew people were really,

01:08:16.610 --> 01:08:20.190
really upset about this. But now that this hurricane has happened,

01:08:20.730 --> 01:08:23.470
those people are probably not going to be able to attend.

01:08:24.170 --> 01:08:28.830
On top of that in 2023 nationwide, which claims to be on your side,

01:08:31.850 --> 01:08:36.290
dropped over 10,500 North Carolina homeowners from their policies.

01:08:36.450 --> 01:08:40.270
They just dropped them. And over half of them were due to hurricane risks,

01:08:40.670 --> 01:08:44.470
which is something by the way that Florida homeowners know all about,

01:08:44.710 --> 01:08:50.210
considering more than 30 insurance companies have now either fully or partially pulled out

01:08:50.210 --> 01:08:55.750
of Florida altogether. And Florida now has the highest insurance costs in the entire country

01:08:55.750 --> 01:09:04.810
with the average homeowner paying over $10,000 a year in 2023. But worse than that is mudslides

01:09:04.810 --> 01:09:10.110
and floods are not covered by the average homeowner policy. That is a separate policy that you

01:09:10.110 --> 01:09:14.670
have to get through the National Flood Insurance Program that's run out of FEMA,

01:09:15.130 --> 01:09:20.330
which apparently hardly anybody has. North Carolina and many other states,

01:09:20.870 --> 01:09:26.550
flood insurance is not required unless the bank requires it. In fact, less than 3% of properties

01:09:26.550 --> 01:09:33.310
in the state have that insurance. So many, many people were not protected.

01:09:33.730 --> 01:09:38.850
It had basic homeowners insurance, including fire and theft, but no landslide or flood

01:09:38.850 --> 01:09:43.470
insurance. The National Flood Insurance Program says across seven affected states,

01:09:43.470 --> 01:09:49.210
less than 1% of homes in the inland counties affected by the storm had flood insurance.

01:09:49.450 --> 01:09:54.970
And in fact, according to FEMA, just 4% of homeowners even have this insurance.

01:09:55.870 --> 01:10:02.270
Flood insurance is not mandatory for most people, although it is if you have a government-backed

01:10:02.270 --> 01:10:09.970
mortgage. But it's all based on flood zones that are set by FEMA. And the data for those

01:10:09.970 --> 01:10:18.110
is based on extremely outdated flood plain maps, which have not taken any of the weather in recent

01:10:18.110 --> 01:10:25.110
years into account. And Wired actually quoted a law professor from the University of North

01:10:25.110 --> 01:10:30.970
Carolina as saying, the biggest non-secret in Washington for decades is how hopelessly out

01:10:30.970 --> 01:10:36.370
of date these flood maps are. And FEMA knows their flood maps aren't up to date.

01:10:36.370 --> 01:10:41.810
And it was reported that the director of FEMA knew it in 2022. They've been knowing this for years

01:10:41.810 --> 01:10:49.230
and they haven't updated it or fixed it. So the bottom line here is there are a whole lot of

01:10:49.230 --> 01:10:57.910
people who are not going to be covered after this event. And if your house doesn't get completely

01:10:57.910 --> 01:11:03.210
wiped out from it, getting water in your house can do tens if not hundreds of thousands

01:11:03.210 --> 01:11:08.030
of dollars in damage to a house. And there's just not a lot of people sitting around with

01:11:08.030 --> 01:11:14.910
hundreds of thousands of dollars ready to pay out of pocket to fix these things. So what's going to

01:11:14.910 --> 01:11:21.570
happen to their house? What's going to happen to their land? Because somewhere somebody had

01:11:21.570 --> 01:11:27.430
this data and they recognized that a lot of these people were not going to be covered after

01:11:27.430 --> 01:11:36.050
this happened. Many homeowners will be unable to afford to rebuild and are now at risk of being

01:11:36.050 --> 01:11:40.910
forced to move out of the area altogether. Start over with nothing or next to nothing

01:11:40.910 --> 01:11:47.170
and to leave the area that for many people their families have been part of for generations and

01:11:47.170 --> 01:11:55.830
generations. That's what's happening here. It's such a cluster you would think that

01:11:55.830 --> 01:11:59.930
this was the most inept coordination of resources ever

01:12:02.370 --> 01:12:06.990
or the most Machiavellian evil. I don't know. I just don't I don't know.

01:12:11.470 --> 01:12:17.950
Finally, before I close out this installment, I just want to say I had someone come on social

01:12:17.950 --> 01:12:24.890
media today and list off to me all of the things that local county and even North Carolina

01:12:24.890 --> 01:12:32.530
states authorities have been doing to help the situation and say to me that I basically need

01:12:32.530 --> 01:12:39.210
to stop criticizing an obviously flawed executive branch. This was the end of the that thread.

01:12:39.470 --> 01:12:45.130
I needed to provide one benefit to the survivors by criticizing an obviously flawed

01:12:45.130 --> 01:12:51.470
executive branch. What my behavior is lowering morale, delaying recovery and harming survivors.

01:12:51.470 --> 01:12:57.410
That's what I was told today. I'm sorry, but after everything that I have seen,

01:12:57.630 --> 01:13:03.670
everybody I have talked to hours upon hours of researching what is going on on the ground there,

01:13:04.250 --> 01:13:10.790
it was all I could do not to just scream through my screen to the point that it exploded.

01:13:11.370 --> 01:13:16.370
The citizen response is amazing. I've seen some amazing responses from local government.

01:13:16.370 --> 01:13:21.770
You know, the problem is not citizens and local government, although questionable on the North

01:13:21.770 --> 01:13:28.270
Carolina Guard there with rotor washing the United Cajun Navy, but that aside, okay, it's not about

01:13:28.270 --> 01:13:32.890
it's not about the citizens stepping up. They're amazing. It is about what the bloated,

01:13:33.110 --> 01:13:39.350
the viathan federal government that is funded to the tune of trillions of taxpayer dollars

01:13:39.350 --> 01:13:45.290
every year did and did not do. And I wrote back and I said with all due respect, you had

01:13:45.290 --> 01:13:49.990
troops not deployed for five days, hundreds of Tennessee Guard deployed to the Middle East

01:13:49.990 --> 01:13:57.490
after the storm hit FEMA not showing up until the sixth. They're sitting on $8 billion in surplus

01:13:57.490 --> 01:14:04.290
funds while they fund housing for migrants that are here illegally. All of this is on record.

01:14:04.470 --> 01:14:08.610
You have dozens of people on the ground, more than dozens. I can't keep track of how many

01:14:08.610 --> 01:14:13.290
videos I have seen from people on the ground saying that their disaster efforts, their aid

01:14:13.290 --> 01:14:19.350
efforts are being hampered. Okay, it's not a local issue. It's a federal issue. Criticizing

01:14:19.350 --> 01:14:25.330
an obviously flawed executive branch is because if we don't criticize it now while it's happening,

01:14:25.770 --> 01:14:29.470
not only will it just get buried when the next one happens and the next one and the next one

01:14:29.470 --> 01:14:36.850
and the next one and forgotten, but it will just keep happening. It will get worse. It will

01:14:36.850 --> 01:14:41.790
get worse. It has gotten worse. This is not better than Katrina guys. This is not better.

01:14:41.790 --> 01:14:47.150
Okay. Things have not gotten better and there were legislative, you know, changes and things.

01:14:47.450 --> 01:14:53.030
None of that has fixed what this is. This is getting worse. It happens every time. It happens so

01:14:53.030 --> 01:14:57.170
much. It's to the point now where it's expected for it to be bad. That is not how things should

01:14:57.170 --> 01:15:02.970
be. So not only will this happen again, but it will get worse if we don't hold these people

01:15:02.970 --> 01:15:07.750
accountable by criticizing it right now while it's happening. And if social media had existed

01:15:07.750 --> 01:15:13.270
at the time of Katrina widespread in the way it does now, more probably would have been done,

01:15:13.710 --> 01:15:18.890
you know, but now we can see it. We can see it all happening. It's unfolding in real time in front

01:15:18.890 --> 01:15:26.250
of our eyes. Accountability saves lives. That is what the media is supposed to be doing, by the

01:15:26.250 --> 01:15:30.950
way. They're supposed to be holding government accountable. That is what they're not playing

01:15:30.950 --> 01:15:36.130
catch all and making excuses and burying and blackholing every mistake. They're supposed

01:15:36.130 --> 01:15:41.090
to be holding them accountable. That is what the fourth branch of government that the unofficial

01:15:41.090 --> 01:15:46.070
fourth branch of the media was supposed to be. That is the point of it is to hold them accountable.

01:15:46.650 --> 01:15:52.830
So you criticize now. Okay. Accountability saves lives. Holding this government accountable

01:15:52.830 --> 01:15:58.190
saves lives because hopefully they don't do this again in the future because there will be

01:15:58.190 --> 01:16:02.350
too much of an outcry to let them get away with it and continue getting away with it as

01:16:02.350 --> 01:16:08.070
they have gotten away with it for decades now. Accountability saves lives. This response did

01:16:08.070 --> 01:16:15.230
not save lives. And in fact, lives may have been lost because of this response. Okay. That is why.

01:16:15.550 --> 01:16:22.590
That is why that is my excuse, my one benefit to the survivors for criticizing and obviously

01:16:22.590 --> 01:16:26.890
flawed executive branch. And I will keep doing it because I am just not going to stop about

01:16:26.890 --> 01:16:34.670
this. All right. So I am sorry if I have done anything to lower anyone's morale, but I do not

01:16:34.670 --> 01:16:41.070
think I am the one on the hook for this. I think this is a government issue and it needs to be

01:16:41.070 --> 01:16:48.710
fixed. This is not right. And the media is not going to tell anybody that they're going to sit

01:16:48.710 --> 01:16:53.970
there like they always do and make excuses for this and then wash it away with the next thing

01:16:53.970 --> 01:16:57.010
that happens they could distract everybody with because that is what they always do.

01:16:57.250 --> 01:17:03.790
You know, I didn't spend the last like 24 hours only taking breaks to eat and go to the bathroom

01:17:03.790 --> 01:17:11.050
trying to make this video because I want to demoralize people in a horrible disaster situation.

01:17:11.430 --> 01:17:15.670
I made this video because I don't want this to keep happening to people. I don't want this

01:17:15.670 --> 01:17:20.630
to be the way we live in this country. That is why I made this video because I want these

01:17:20.630 --> 01:17:30.770
people to survive. Because I don't want things to be this way and people don't deserve things to be

01:17:30.770 --> 01:17:42.620
this way. So that's why. That's why.