Mal Fuego feat. Mike Rothschild (E308)
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If you're hearing this, well done. You found a way to connect to the internet. Welcome to the QAA podcast, episode 308, Malfuego, featuring Mike Rothschild. As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rakitansky, Julian Fields, and Travis View.

We are recording this episode on January 20th, during the first couple hours of President Trump's second term, which means that he is now officially America's second non-consecutive president. No thanks to you, Travis. No thanks to you, Mr. View. You were always a critic. Yeah, I suppose so. I hope I will continue to be. Look who's eating their hat now. Yeah, well...

So we try to limit the number of firm predictions we make on this show. But I will say now that unlike the first non-consecutive president, Grover Cleveland, Trump will not be staunchly anti-imperialist nor a good ally in Washington to the native people of Hawaii. Now, look it up. Cleveland was actually pretty good on those particular issues. In fact, Julian, if you could stop...

Stop fantasizing about all American presidents dying by violence for just a few minutes. I think you would find that Grover Cleveland is your favorite president. I think you would find that Grover Cleveland is dead. I think you would both find that Grover Cleveland like married his daughter or something like that. I think that's probably disinformation, but I think Grover Cleveland was not a president and was in fact a character on Sesame Street.

All right. So I think it's time does my job for me. I don't have to threaten these guys. Where is he now? Six feet under. I suppose that's true. Now, it's also a safe bet that Trump will be the conductor of a series of absurd spectacles that will, in effect, cover up, distort or distract from tragedy, violence, cruelty, corruption and the level of wealth inequality, which has only worsened since he last left office.

So today we're going to talk about one ongoing mass tragedy which has personally impacted us to varying degrees, the deadly and destructive LA wildfires. As of this recording, the fires have led to at least 27 fatalities, the evacuation of over 200,000 residents, the destruction of more than 12,000 structures, and they have caused an estimated $50 billion in economic damage.

Entire neighborhoods such as Pacific Palisades, Malibu, and Altadena have been entirely or at least largely destroyed. It is one of the most catastrophic disasters in LA's history. It is tremendous.

truly awful. And a friend of mine, you know, technically her house is still standing, but because some guy near her was hoarding lithium ion batteries, it is like a toxic spill zone, basically. And of course, insurance does not cover toxic infection of like every part of your home to the point where you cannot return to it. Fun.

Now, Trump has said that he will probably visit the destroyed areas in L.A. this coming week. So looking forward to that. So I think it'll be valuable to unpack both the truth and the baseless conspiracy theories about the fires before he continues to leverage the pain of this region for political clout. Joining us is a man who is unfortunately the world's top expert on the intersection of these topics. Ha ha ha!

One and only. Wow. Wow, what an introduction. Travis is somehow more disrespectful than me, but it's such an organized fashion. Wow.

One of one. Yeah. I'm speaking, of course, of author, journalist, former Altadena resident, and current climate refugee, Mike Rothschild. Mike, it is always a pleasure to have you on, but I, of course, wish we were speaking under better circumstances. Well, thanks, guys. I can always count on the three of you to lift my spirits whenever my house burns down. So, you know, we're one for one.

I just think it's such a bummer that the Jewish space lasers targeted you. Like this must have been an error. Like someone must have like fat fingered the controls. You know, it's they said that irony died after 9-11. Nope. Nope. Irony is alive and well and messing with me on a daily basis. Man, genuinely, I am sorry to hear that, man. That is awful.

Thank you. Yeah, I know. Growing up in Southern California, it's like every couple of years, there's always fires. It's always like you always expect it. It's always a possibility that might happen. It's just, yeah, we're really sorry to hear about it, Mike. We're wishing the best for you and your family. Wow, thank you, guys.

So yeah, Mike, you've been writing some like some very touching personal essays on your blog about your experience, like fleeing the fire and like losing your home, dealing with the aftermath and the rumors that fill in the large amount of uncertainty that comes with an event like this. So I was hoping you could, we could start by you just sort of like talking about like what you've been through. Yeah. So we started having the Santa Ana winds, I guess it was almost two weeks ago and we've had it before.

You know, everybody in the San Gabriel Valley, you're just kind of used to it. It happens at the beginning of the year. You know, you may get some branches shorn off when you're trees or you may get some roof tiles knocked off. You know, they were really, really bad this year. The worst anybody had seen. I mean, I, you know, people I know who've lived in the Pasadena, Altadena area for 50, 60 years, they said it's never been this bad.

And I was getting home with our kids about six o'clock and I could see in the distance the glow of what I guess at that point was already the Eaton fire. The Palisades fire had been going for hours at that point, but we were pretty far from it. We always thought that we were not in the fire risk area. The fire risk area really sort of

ended at probably the biggest street in the northern part of Altadena, which is Loma Alta. Everything north of Loma Alta, you're starting to get into the mountains, you're starting to get into Angeles National Forest, like there's real danger there. But south of Loma Alta, you know, it's a lot of concrete, it's a lot of streets, you know, there's just not danger there.

But of course, we'd never seen the winds like this, and it hadn't rained at all this winter. So everything was very dry. The wind is just blasting, and it's really ripe for something to happen. And we started to see the glow of the fire probably about six o'clock, and then maybe by about 8.30 or 9, we could start to see the fire literally creeping across the mountains. You can start to see almost individual trees burning. If you walked out from...

where our house was, and you look to the left, the mountains are right there. And so probably about nine o'clock-ish from where we, from where I was standing, you could see the fire. And we had not gotten any kind of evacuation notice yet. In fact, our power was still on. We decided, let's just get some stuff in the cars. Better safe than sorry. We may have to evacuate for a day or two just because...

because of nothing else but the smoke. So we got documents, we got photos, we got stuff off the walls that really could not be replaced. But we really didn't have any idea what to grab. So, you know, we're grabbing kind of random pieces of clothing, random stuff. There's no real rhyme or reason to it. So about midnight, we decide, or maybe a little bit earlier than that, we decide, let's try to get some sleep. Let's just see how it goes in the morning.

About 3.25 in the morning, our phones start going off. And it is, get out now. It's not, get ready to go. It's, you need to run literally right now. By this point, our power is out. So our house is freezing. We're running around panicking. Our kids are running around panicking. We grab...

various things and shove them into bags. I had the wherewithal to get dressed, but I spent an inordinate amount of time looking for the right t-shirt as if I was going to the club. Like, gotta have the right shirt if you're gonna evacuate. Well, that's real, because you don't know...

when you're going to be back or how long you're going to be gone. And so you're like, what outfit is going to sustain me? Like it's a very, yeah. Because I don't want to look schlubby in the evacuation center. No, you're, you, you finally gotten your big role as a crisis actor and now you're, you're picking wardrobe. Right.

This is my wardrobe for my crisis actor. I love having another Jew on the show. This is just wonderful. As literally your life and your home are threatened, you're like, I don't want to look like a fucking schlemiel with the other evacuees. My younger son leaves with one sock on. I mean, it's just...

You just don't know. So we get outside. It is pitch black because all the lights are out. It's cold. There's ash and soot in the air. There's cars going north and south. We can't see any fire because we don't know where the fire is, but we just drive. And we drove probably about two miles south to where my mother-in-law lives in Pasadena. We thought, okay, we're just going to go there. It's a safe place. It's not in the evacuation zone. We're fine there.

We finally sort of calm down, 6.30 in the morning, we try to get a little bit of sleep, bam, phones go off again, now you need to evacuate where you are again. So we head to the church where we got married, which is becoming an evacuation center. We spent most of the day there. That's where we found out from our neighbors that our house was gone, and we...

we decided that we were going to head east and we headed out to Claremont, which is about maybe about a 40 minute drive east of LA. And we spent a couple of nights there with family friends. And so of course, by that point, I'm starting to get media contacts because I've been posting about like

Hey, I just lost my house in the fire. Like, this is a real thing. So I do Anderson Cooper. I talked to Anderson Cooper, who had been reporting from just around the corner from my house. That's fucking wild. I'm talking to Anderson Cooper. My phone is propped up on a jewelry box being held up by a clothes hamper, uh,

I'm in the one long-sleeve shirt that I have. I mean, it's just like, you can't even imagine this. I don't remember anything I said because I'm in shock, but also I need to make sure that I have enough headroom to...

on my camera so that I look good on like national TV. It's, it's, it is, I mean, surreal doesn't do it any sort of justice whatsoever. Yeah. That's a, yeah. Lots, lots and lots of stories like that. I mean, is, um, very, yeah, just very, very difficult to imagine.

Now, before we talk about conspiracy theories related to the fires, let's talk about what is known about the cause of the fires, which right now is not a lot. Now, it may take some time before officials conclude their investigations. For example, the ATF, which is responsible for investigating wildfires at the federal level, didn't release their report on the 2023 Maui fires until more than a year after that disaster.

If it were me running the government, I would simply keep alcohol and firearms away from any fire-related stuff. Yeah, you'd think. I'll be honest. I'm not sure why they got that particular responsibility. It's got fire in the name. Yeah, it's got fire in the name. Close enough. But yeah.

But yeah, that investigation took 14 months. So these things can be complicated. But what is known is that most wildfires in inhabited areas are human caused. Now, whether that's intentional, like arson, or accidental, like a downed power line, or an out-of-control explosion from a gender reveal party, no.

A gender reveal party, of course, was the cause of the 2020 El Dorado fire, which burned over 22,000 acres. Oh, I'm hearing the ATF has figured it out. The world is turning and it turns out the fire was always burning. But we didn't start the fire.

fire. We didn't start it. I know that. We did not. What is much better understood, however, is the conditions that allowed the fires to spread so far and so fast. According to climate and weather experts, there are actually three specific conditions that allowed the fires to get this bad.

Wet years, a dry year, and high winds. So, number one, the previous two years were extremely wet for Southern California. This deluge of rain created an unusually large amount of vegetation, which can serve as fuel for those fires if they get too dry.

In 2024, over the summer, there was a twice the average amount of biomass in grasslands and scrublands in coastal Southern California due to these two wet winters in a row. And number two, this past year in Southern California, like Mike was talking about, had been very, very dry. The last time that Los Angeles recorded more than one-tenth of an inch of rainfall was May 5th, over eight months ago. So that day, LA received 0.1%.

One three inches of rain. This is weird, right? We typically start seeing some precipitation around November or December, but it has been bone dry. I don't know. When did you start feeling like something's off? I remember for me it was around Christmas. I was like, don't we usually get a little bit of rain by now? It felt very, very eerie. Yeah, it rained heavily.

some tiny, tiny little bit at some point, maybe, you know, end of December. And I was like, oh yeah, it hasn't rained at all. My trees are not growing at all. Everything is brown. This, this is really different from the last couple of years. Yeah. So in fact, since scientists have started keeping reliable records on rainfall in 1877, there's only been one possible year where it

when it has been any drier. And that was the 1962 through 1963 season. So, you know, if your feeling is like, man, I don't remember when it was ever been this dry in Southern California, it's probably because you're younger than retirement age. Yeah. None of us. I mean, we're all getting old, but none of us were born then. Yeah. Yeah.

And this dryness helped turn all of that abundant vegetation created in the previous years into highly flammable tinder. So there's this really great interview that The New Yorker published with the UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, where he explains how weirdly dry it has been in the region. This is now either the driest or second driest start to the season on record throughout Southern California, going back 100 years.

In modern history, it has not been this dry this late in the ostensible rainy season. That is something that really sets the stage for these fires, because had these same winds occurred following, say, an inch or two of rain so far in the season, even if that's below average, it's still a good soaking. If that had occurred, we wouldn't be seeing the fires that we're currently seeing. We wouldn't have that explosively dry vegetation. It essentially has not rained in Los Angeles since last spring.

in many areas, about a tenth of an inch or less, which is insignificant from a wildfire perspective. On top of that, the inland parts of Southern California, the mountains, the elevated plateaus, and the desert regions experienced their hottest summer on record. The city of Los Angeles did not, to be clear. But then, in early September, even the city of Los Angeles, and really the entire Los Angeles basin, did experience a record-breaking heat wave.

which I remember. Yeah, it was insanely hot. My air conditioning just ceased functioning because it was struggling so much. Yeah. By the way, this phenomenon of like very wet ears being followed by very dry ears or vice versa is a predicted consequence of anthropogenic aging.

climate change. It even has a catchy name. It's called climate whiplash. There's a very recent scientific paper published in the journal Nature under the title Hydroclimate Volatility on the Warming Earth. And it asserts that the data shows that these large transitions between very dry and very wet conditions between seasons and between years have significantly increased in frequency since the mid-

20th century. So the weather conditions are weird, but you have to keep in mind that for the rest of your life, this kind of weirdness is going to be normal. Thanks, Travis. That's, appreciate it. My pleasure. And

And the third condition that allowed the fires to get as bad as they did was the very strong dry winds, the so-called Santa Ana winds, a regular visitor here in Southern California. So these pushed the fires into more fuel faster. And of course, it's not unusual for LA to see strong winds in January. In fact, it's pretty normal. But these were especially strong and included gusts of up to 100 miles per hour.

Yeah, it was crazy. It was crazy that morning when the winds hit. We were outside, like, trying to gather the garbage bins because it just so happened that Tuesday morning is, like, trash pickup day. And so everybody's bins are out in the street. And the trucks come early, so all these bins are empty. And we walked out to, like, neighbors in the street, like, running around.

running around trying to grab these like huge garbage bins. It really felt like the beginning of like the suburban apocalypse. Yeah. I, I'm just kind of underneath Pasadena and had some friends in Pasadena just kind of already like migrating downward. Um,

because it was not looking good. Yeah, the wind was absolutely brutal that morning. And I could watch with a mature avocado tree and I could watch it just sort of like being whipped back and forth. And I'm just going like, this is this is bad. I mean, we're we lived in a pretty sturdy house. We had a hundred year old cottage and it was it was quite well built. And I was sort of like, OK, this is shaking a lot. This I don't like this. And you know that that's well before the fire.

Yeah. That's, you know, it fucking sucks because it's like there are so many things to be anxious about. And like, I hate to imagine, but for somebody in your case, it's like, here's one thing of anxiety. It's like the winds, the avocado. Is the house going to hold up to these winds? Is the tree going to go over? And then as things get like progressively worse, new anxieties are coming in, new threats, like new...

I feel so bad that you had to go through any and all of this. Yeah, it's been a lot.

And it's going to continue to be a lot for the foreseeable future. On the plus side, we'll get a collection of poetry from Jake called The Wind, The Avocados, The Fire. I look forward to reading it. No, but while we're talking about poetry, I got to say, Mike, the pieces that you've written over the past couple days on your Patreon have been like insanely touching and haunting and...

I'm so used to reading you write about conspiracy theories and history and that sort of thing, which you're amazing at, obviously. But these personal stories, I sent you a DM. My mom reached out to me and she was like, his writing reminds me of Tim O'Brien, like the things they carry. Coming from a veteran English teacher, I don't know if she's ever said that about my writing.

At the very least, just know that the documentation that you've been keeping of this event, because this is like, you know, it reminds me of the old Calvin and Hobbes strip that says, like, this is one of those things that happens to somebody else, but were somebody else to somebody else. And so to keep these records for this horrific and historical event to happen to you, like, I think a lot of people are finding value in these writings. So...

You know, if that's one good thing that could come out of this, I guess that's a, you know, rose-colored glasses, fire-colored glasses maybe in this case. You know, for me, it's just, I feel like I need to document this. Certainly for other people,

to read, but also for myself. I don't want to forget the details. I don't want to forget how I feel right now because in six months it's going to be different. You know, we're maybe going to be building a new house. We're going to be dealing with all of those hassles. I need to get this stuff out of my head and down on, you know, paper, quote.

unquote. And if people read it, that's great. And, you know, eventually maybe at some point I'll kind of do something with all of this, but you know, that's so far down the line. I don't know yet, but for me right now, I just need to get this out of my head so I can cram my head full of other stuff. It's the things they carried, but it's about like, like what toys you pick.

when you forget to wear a sock. Right. The, the sort of the random things that we're realizing we don't have anymore. You know, my, my late father-in-law's tie collection is gone. Legos that I had when I was a kid that were 40 plus years old, those are gone. But then like, you know, stuff we just bought, like we, you know, you, you just bought a new roll of paper, you know, a new thing of paper towel rolls. Well, that's gone. Like,

It's just wild. The stuff that comes into your head in the middle of the night when you're like, oh yeah, we didn't grab this priceless thing. And also we wasted a hundred bucks on this thing that we were going to use and we never took out of the box. Yeah. It's like the weight of the historical and like precious things that we collect. And at the same time, the precious junk that we also have. Yeah. There've been a lot of jokes in the, uh,

various text chains I've been on about, well, you know, I don't have to declutter my kid's playroom anymore. Don't have to worry about repainting the front porch. Yeah. Yeah. You don't need Marie Kondo anymore. Nope. Nope. I have embraced minimalism like a hammer.

But I imagine also that this is like, you know, one of the crazy things about it is like, like you said, like this is going to be something that you're going to, it's going to be a part of who you are for the rest of your life. You know, six months down the line, you're going to be like, oh, and I, and I did have that, that like, uh, you're like, ah, that pair of shoes or like, you'll think of something that like, you're like, oh, where is that? And you're like, oh yeah.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. The fire. Because your brain isn't trained. Our brains aren't trained to process these kind of things that we're used to seeing in the movies or on TV. And so I can't even imagine living through a Roland Emmerich movie. I've watched so many. Yeah. No, you never imagine it'll be you. You always think of it as sort of...

you know, climate, you know, hurricane refugees in the South are like old World War II footage of people, you know, pushing carts full of, you know, bundles of things and like wearing babushkas and, you know, hats. Yeah. I just am glad that I still have my water painting of Michael Flynn on a t-shirt.

You know what? Pack it next to your documents. Yeah, seriously, dude. Yeah, put all the QAnon gear that we've acquired over the years into the firebox. That'll be in my bindle for sure. Just all old, like, ironic QAnon merch. In fact, it'll be the only thing that you save. So, like, the only T-shirts. Basically, you'll turn into a QBeliever because those are the only items you'll have.

explaining to someone else no this one's signed by Dylan Wheeler he used to be he used to be a guy he used to be he used to be the guy I don't know there's a non-zero chance that the this Trump the second Trump administration will want some of those items to be added to the Smithsonian so oh yeah yeah presidential library you know

I think it's really important to note, you know, the conditions that allowed the fires to get bad, because even if you were to assume that these fires were set deliberately as part of an evil plot, or even if you were to assume that the L.A. Fire Department is not very good, these fires could not have been destructive as they were without these conditions being in place, which means that any explanation about these fires that does not acknowledge these conditions does.

doesn't make sense and is necessarily incomplete. So I make these points because conspiracy theories or disinformation about fires are often presented as an alternative explanation to climate change. They say, oh no, it's not climate change.

It's the Jewish space lasers. But it doesn't work like that, because even if you assume that the Jewish space lasers are in fact what first sparked the fires, you can't explain why they are this destructive without also making reference to the conditions caused by climate change. You know, it's like if it was radio and, you know, the Jewish space lasers tried to spark something. Well, it wouldn't get very far. OK, someone hasn't heard of the Jewish space winds. OK.

There's just no coherent way to sidestep the issue, like even if you were to grant the most ludicrous conspiracy theories. With all that being said, so there are some possible leads on the more like specific causes of the two most destructive fires in L.A. That's the Palisades Fire and the Eaton Fire. So the New York Times reported that a possible ignition source for the Palisades wildfire is a small fire that occurred on New Year's Eve on

on a nearby hiking trail. The fire was caused by fireworks, but quickly put out by firefighters. However, officials are investigating whether the remaining embers could have been rekindled by the strong winds. At least one lawyer is investigating if a downed utility line could have sparked the fire.

In the case of the Eaton Fire, which has burned over 14,100 acres and was 87% contained as of this recording on January 20th, investigators with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection are looking into possible failures on electrical towers owned by Southern California Edison over Altadena.

Like I said, investigations are ongoing, but that's what we have so far. Good job, Edison. And I'm talking about the inventor. Yeah. I, you know, it's, it's interesting because in all of the groups and, you know, WhatsApp chains and all this stuff, people are not really talking about blame. I think at this point it's just, nobody really knows. But I will say I, there are a lot of lawyers, um,

making their presence known. My Facebook feed is full of like, were you affected by the Eaton fire? We may have a suit for you. And, you know, I have learned very quickly the difference between a class action and a mass action. So class action is a lawsuit where everybody suffers the same damage. Mass action is an action taken by individual people because they've suffered different amounts of damage. There have been a couple of zooms with law firms. We jumped on one and then got off because it was like,

50 people who didn't know how to turn their microphones off. Oh God. Oh my God. It was, um, but there's a, there's a lot,

going on in the legal realm. And that's kind of all I can say at this point. I mean, I don't have much else to say, but the litigation, it is happening and it will happen. And you're going to probably start to see a lot more about that. Tragedies within, within tragedies where you jump onto a zoom call to get any possible answer about, you know, compensation for, you know, uh, or,

or, or it's any kind of information regarding rebuild. And it's just like echoing backgrounds and like Pete. Yeah. And like people hearing people being like, well, I don't know. Is it on? Is it, I can't, I can't hear you. It's just like with like the vibes also of like, what do you call it? Like, uh,

Those horrible timeshare meetings, but it's about your house that burned down and 50 other people. I can't even imagine. Dude, this sounds like my anxiety nightmare. Yep. Yep. That's exactly what it is.

Jesus Christ. So, Travis, can we hear from the real specialists? Yes. No further ado. Let's hear what, you know, since you have, this is the problem. It's like whenever there's like not a lot of good information, people fill it with bad information. People loathe an information void. And so let's talk about how people have been filling that up. So.

So I rushed to see what Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene had to say about this issue because, you know, back in 2018, she suggested that California wildfires were part of a Rothschild plot to use satellites to clear land for a high-speed rail line. So this is the famous Jewish space lasers that gave Mike the title for his most recent book. Yeah.

This is so sad because it's like the only way we could imagine something so cool as a high speed rail line is like if the deep state first like kills a bunch of people and burns their houses down. So,

So this time around, she suggested a kind of like impractical solution to the issue. So here's what she tweeted. Why don't they use geoengineering like cloud seeding to bring rain down on the wildfires in California? They know how to do it. So one major answer to that is that there were no clouds. You can't do cloud seeding.

without clouds. So that's really a non-starter. But, you know, I think this is progress on Marjorie's part. She's sort of, she's asking basically, why aren't the white hats doing geoengineering as opposed to like, you know, why aren't the Jews, you know, burning up California? Right. You know, these are the people who have spent decades afraid of chemtrails and who think geoengineering is a George Soros plot to

warm the earth so that the elites can get better real estate and, you know, Oprah can build a bigger palace. Now it's like they suddenly want the geoengineering. You know, when is the technology in the hands of the good guys versus the bad guys? It's almost like there's no internal consistency to these things. These absolute fucking losers just want a good cabal. They're totally resigned to being ruled over by a secret cabal. Yeah, and Lord knows that if...

If they did look up into the sky and see planes, you know, doing their best to cloud seed, they would be like they are dropping chemicals to mix in alien DNA with the population. They'll never be happy. Right. They'd be calling for like the Wilhelm Reich gun and be like, oh, the orgone. We need the orgone gun. We need to cloud burst, cloud bust.

Yeah, I remember during the Maui fires, there was a conspiracy theory that somehow the buildings that had blue roofs were passed over for some reason because, like, you know, the people in the cabal knew that blue roofs repelled these, you know, these lasers, these, you know, direct energy weapons or whatever. So I hope that Marjorie Taylor Greene introduces legislation that mandates blue roofs to fight wildfires. That seems like it would be up her alley. That'll look cute. We could look like Grease. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I...

I think so much of this is that a lot of these people just don't understand how fire operates. And we're going through it in my own neighborhood. So obviously my house is gone and the house on either side of us is gone, but the house two houses south of us, perfectly fine, not damaged at all. The house behind us, perfectly fine. A little bit of singeing on their outdoor shower, I think. But

But then almost every other house on that street, destroyed. It doesn't make any sense. And it has many, many different causes. Part of it is certainly the wind. Part of it is when firefighters get there. We actually saw on the local news, our neighbor just to the south, their house was...

burning on TV. You could tell that there were also firefighters there working on putting it out. So it seems reasonable that the fire was making its way down south and the firefighters were able to get to and put out part of our neighbor's house and were able to completely save our neighbor two doors down, but weren't able to save our house. It's not a plot. It's not a laser. It's just these things have a mind of their own. And once they go, there's

there's no telling what they will do next, but that's not the easy answer that people want. I spilled my big gulp and it fried my laptop, but, but my paperback, which was right next to my laptop is dry. Right. Explain that. Explain that motherfucker.

Yeah, honestly, the fires are worse than having a mind of their own. They're ruled by mindless chaos. Well, yeah, that's exactly it. They're a monster. They don't think. They just go. Travis is becoming a Discordian.

I sometimes talk about how like, you know, a core assumption of conspiracists is that like all major events are the product of very specific and detailed design and purpose. So all major events happened exactly the way they did because that was the precise end goal of some secret puppet masters or some secret plan. Now, obviously, powerful, corrupt people do, in fact, make secret plans in order to consolidate their power at the expense of people less powerful than them.

But conspiracies suppose a level of detailed planning of history that is simply not possible in the real world. Now, we saw how this can work recently when actor-director Mel Gibson appeared on Fox News. Mel Gibson is one of the victims of the fire. His $14.5 million Malibu mansion was destroyed by the Palisades fire.

And while speaking to Laura Ingram, Gibson did some live baking, suggesting that the fires were as severe as they were on purpose for some reason. Well, you know, I know they were messing with the water, letting reserves go for one reason or another. They've been doing that a while. California has a lot of problems that sort of baffled the mind as far as

why they do things. And then in the events like this, you sort of look, oh, is it on purpose? Which, it's an insane thing to think. But one begins to ponder whether or not there is a purpose in mind. What could it be? You know, I don't know. Do they want the state empty? I don't know. Dear God, man. I know. Last seen in Twin Peaks, The Return, covered in oil, asking, got a light? Yeah.

I mean, this is such strange television. It's like, here comes Oscar-winning director, actor Mel Gibson to mutter to himself about what he thinks may have caused the fires. God, he must be such a fucking pain in the ass to hang out with. Oh, God. Oh, God.

You could just tell he's like, oh, he's bursting at the scene to tell you exactly who he thinks is responsible. Oh, and I have a feeling that it would rhyme with news. You know what he sounds like? He sounds like the guy who was allowed back into Thanksgiving, but only if he didn't mention very specific things.

And he cannot help himself. It's almost like there's some elders in the

Maybe one of the national parks, maybe Yellowstone, maybe Zion. Oh my God. Oh my God. He really cannot help himself. His eyes. Look, you know, it's so funny. The video that Travis clipped, no diss to Travis, but very low res video. Just, you know, it's very, very pixelated. And even through the pixelation, you can see how fucking wildly insane his eyes are.

eyes oh yeah like absolutely he's got the expression of like ghost rider as if his head is like a flaming skull but like he looks cooked he's absolutely cooked he's baking he looks cooked it's it's fucking fantastic i can't wait for his new movie about jesus coming back

Yeah. And his eventual turn as a Fox News anchor. Oh, God. Now, I think it's also worth noting that according to Trump, Mel Gibson will have some kind of role in the Trump administration. What? Yeah. Specifically, he named Gibson as one of three pro-Trump Hollywood stars who will be like ambassadors to Hollywood. So.

Here's what he posted on Truth Social. It is my honor to announce Jon Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone to be special ambassadors to a great but very troubled place, Hollywood, California. They will serve as special envoys to me for the purpose of bringing Hollywood, which has lost much business over the last four years, to foreign countries back bigger and bigger.

better and stronger than ever before. These three very talented people will be my eyes and ears. Oh my God. My head, my shoulders, knees and toes. And I will get done what they suggest. What they suggest? Oh no. Oh my God, dude. Oh no. He's naming them ambassadors to...

To Hollywood. To a fucking city in his own country. It doesn't, yeah. John Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone. I will say that I would kill for a buddy movie called Three Kings, but it's them, and they're not in Iraq. They're in California. Also, poor James Woods, man.

I know. Oh, this is a huge snub. A huge slight. A huge slight. Oh, the Woodster. The Woodster. He's no longer hot. Yeah, to pick Jon Voight over. And that probably really pisses off Woods because I'll bet in their younger years, he and Voight would go out for the same roles. Well, and Woods, I mean, he got an executive producer credit on Oppenheimer. Yeah.

He's an actual recent Oscar winner. Yeah, that's true. Maybe he's a little too close. He's a little too close. A little too close to the cabal. Only losers actually lose their homes like James Woods. I don't like Christopher Nolan movies. They're very hard to understand. He likes to make the movies backwards and then go forwards instead of...

A lot of movies start at the beginning and they go to the end, which is how movies are supposed to be. But Christopher Nolan, sometimes he'll start at the end and go to the beginning. Or sometimes he'll even, a lot of people are saying he'll start in the middle and go to the end and go to the beginning. Very confusing stuff. Anyways, my ambassador, Sylvester Stallone, will make much more comprehensive movies and better movies about going to space and time travel. There's one last line that you have to get to. Okay, okay.

These three very talented people will be my eyes and ears, and I will get done what they suggest. It will again be like the United States of America itself, the golden age of Hollywood. Folks, we're bringing back the silent flicks. We're bringing, we're, folks, Buster Keaton, Buster Keaton, he was, he was a, the house falls, but the, but the door is right over him.

And he survives. We're going to be making Mississippi Burning over and over again, but from the other perspective. We're bringing back Lenny Riefenstahl. We're bringing back all of the greatest filmmakers. All the greatest guys. Harvey Weinstein. He's coming back better than ever. Rebirth of a nation.

Full color HD, rebirth of a nation, but with the Avengers. I genuinely would love John Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone to be in something. Just something. Maybe the three amigos. Yeah. Mel Gibson would be like, he would be like, I fundamentally have religious objections to starring in this movie. And then Sylvester Stallone in blackface answers him. Oh, God.

So this announcement from Trump apparently surprised Gibson. Gibson told the trade publication Variety, quote, I got the tweet at the same time as all of you and was just as surprised. Nevertheless, I heed the call. If I were sending people undercover to like report on, you know, the bad and evil and and the far left Hollywood, I wouldn't like name them like you just.

You burned all your agents. I don't know. This is interesting. Like be part of Trump's governing style. So there are people who support me and people who don't. And the people who don't support me, I smear and attack. And the people who do support me, I tell them what to do via tweet. And I assume they'll do it.

They'll be my eyes and ears. Specifically, Mel Gibson will be my eyes, my big, bulging, paranoid blue eyes. Can you imagine just being like, well, I had no idea I was going to be the ambassador to Hollywood, but look, if my ticket's pulled, I'll answer the call. The ambassador to Hollywood.

Hollywood. I don't, what does it mean to like be someone else's ambassador to a place where you already live? I don't. Yeah, if all of the movies have to go through Mel Gibson, John Voight, and Sylvester Stallone, we're going to get some great movies. Do they have diplomatic immunity?

Trump thinks the golden age of Hollywood was the 80s. Can you imagine Kevin Feige, or whatever, however you pronounce his last name, the head of Marvel or whatever, and they're like, well, they're like, all right, fellas, that's Picture Lock on Avengers 12. Like, wow, $300 million? This is amazing. Is it ready? I mean, is it ready to go up to the top? And they're like, yeah, send it to Gibson.

Now, Trump has already weighed in on the fires by taking aim at California Governor Gavin Newsom. Trump specifically accused Newsom of refusing to sign some sort of document called the Water Restoration Declaration, which does not exist. Ha ha!

So here's what Trump posted. Governor Gavin Newsom refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water from excess rain and snow melt from the north to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way. Virtually? I don't know. Nearly. He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish...

Never thought we'd see a worthless fish. Essentially. In essence, it's worthless. A worthless fish, piece of shit fish. Not enough gills. Too small to eat. Owes me money. Piece of fucking shit fish.

They don't even taste good. You can't even put them on pizza or sneak them into a salad that you did not know that was one of the ingredients. It's called a gefilte. And let me tell you where this fish comes from. Protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt by giving it less water. It didn't work. Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha!

So he's like, you've destroyed your city because you wanted to protect a stupid fish. We're absolutely worthless. And guess what? You didn't even protect the fish. All of those measures, the fish remains unprotected. Yeah.

Yeah, one of the rhetorical gifts that Trump has is to be able to do these multi-layered attacks. You know, it's like it's not just, you know, you wanted to protect the fish. You wanted to protect a worthless fish. And not only did you want to protect this worthless fish, you failed at it. Incredible. Can you imagine being those fish and reading that tweet and be like, what the fuck, dude? Like, I'm worthless? What did we do? Like, I'm fucking worthless? Like, I'm just a fucking fish. I'm literally... Yeah, fish catching strays. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm literally just like trying to eat a couple particles of the water, a couple bugs, you know, pooping every now and again, trying to stay afloat. And like the president of the United States is fucking attacking me. Like, what the hell? So the availability of water has been a special concern after some fire hydrants in the Pacific Pacific.

Palisades temporarily stopped pumping water as firefighters attempted to contain a massive blaze there. So the L.A. Water Department attributed this issue to excessive demand on the system. So the department couldn't refill tanks quickly enough, so the pressure dropped and water struggled to reach hydrants in the hills, specifically like elevated areas. But

But this was an issue related to infrastructure, not water availability. In fact, when the fire started, all but three of the state's major reservoirs were filled at or above their historical averages. One of the exceptions is the Santa Ynez Reservoir, a 117 million gallon water resource near the Pacific Palisades, which was under renovation and empty forever.

when the fire started. So in response to that, Newsom announced an independent state investigation into the loss of water pressure and unavailability of water from that reservoir. So as far as like what the hell Trump is talking about, Trump appeared to be referring to a plan from Trump's first administration to direct more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in Northern California to farms in the Central Valley and Southern California cities. Newsom's administration of

posed it saying that would endanger fish species in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. But that had no impact on the firefighting efforts. Most Los Angeles water does not come from Northern California. It comes from the city's 112 year old aqueduct that runs from the Owens Valley east of the Sierra Nevada. And the supposed, again, the supposed water restoration declaration is not something that is real. You know,

this is, I mean, I feel like this is, this thing reminds me of like why fact checking Trump is such a fucking pain because step one is figuring out what the hell could he possibly be referring to, you know, kind of like guessing what he might be getting at and like trying to like reference that. I mean, I know that like the wonderful company, uh,

the Resnicks, who control most of the water in California. I know that they are basically being paid to like, you know, kind of help some of these fish survive. It sounds like his restoration was just a way to get more water to, you know, some of these commercial concerns. Well, and the L.A.,

firefighting system wasn't designed to fight multiple major fires at the same time. There wasn't enough water because there were too many fires. They couldn't get planes in the air because the winds were way too high. There wasn't pressure because there wasn't any water. You can't design a firefighting system, especially not a hundred-year-old one, to fight massive fires that are not really that close to each other.

And the idea of, well, we're going to truck in the water from Sacramento to L.A., that doesn't work. It just I mean, even in the best of circumstances, it just takes too long. I don't think these people really understand how big California is and what the needs are of a city like Los Angeles. You can't just like send some water bottles down and be done with it.

One surprisingly popular claim online is that the fires are somehow related to the arrest of rap mogul Sean Diddy Combs for organized sex trafficking and other crimes. He needed it for all his water-based lube. People are saying that the fires were intentionally set in order to destroy evidence of elite involvement in sex trafficking.

So conspiracists online have been especially interested in the claims by a woman named Allie Carter. Allie Carter is a woman who, for a few years now, has claimed that she was the victim of high-level sex trafficking. Now, I don't know what Allie Carter has or has not gone through.

But what I do know is that many of her specific claims lack credibility for a few reasons. One of which is that her claims frequently are just a repetition of old false claims from the conspiracist's right rather than any genuine personal testimony. For example, she has claimed that she was trafficked in the tunnels under the Getty Museum in LA. So this is a repetition of a false claim of...

of children being imprisoned in the Getty by a, that was first sort of spread by conspiracist Stephen D. Kelly. We did an episode on it a few years ago. And Ali Carter has also repeated the transphobic claim that Michelle Obama is actually a man. I've been trafficked through many elite places. I went from the Buckingham Palace to under the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Still under the custody of Child Protective Services, the child welfare system. And everybody is so worried about the elite. And we could give those names of Barack Obama, Joe Biden. We know about Michelle Obama. That's a man. Just Jesus Christ. I just just absolute nonsense. But has also not helped her credibility is that Ali Carter has claimed to be Tupac Shakur's daughter, even though the rapper did not have any children.

And she has also spread her message by appearing on the show of rabid anti-Semite Stu Peters. So there's nothing that she's saying that's really worth taking seriously. Honestly, her whole shtick reminds me of Kathy O'Brien. This is the woman who claimed to have been basically MKUltra'd into BWF.

becoming a hypnotized sex slave of several elites, including Bill and Hillary Clinton. Yeah, this is, I don't know what her deal is, but yeah, she has been spreading a lot of nonsense. But of course, conspiracists take her seriously.

Several conspiracies latched onto the claim made by Ali Carter back in October of last year that fires would be used to destroy evidence. So here's how one person on Instagram explained this conspiracy theory. Ali Carter told us that there's a huge arrest coming that's going to shake the nation. She also said to watch out for fires because they're going to be burning evidence. The world is going to crumble when they see this next arrest. In the meantime, there's going to be distractions and fires to hide evidence.

Allie Carter told us about these underground tunnels in LA. They're small cities where celebrities go to have parties. She's been down there and she entered through a museum. Hollywood's trying to destroy all this evidence by fires. How are they going to destroy evidence in the tunnels? I'm really on the fence about this conspiracy theory, but it's starting to make more and more sense. If the fires are tied in with Diddy, they must be covering some deep shit. If they're willing to burn down a whole city, it has to be something big.

She's on the fence. She's not quite there yet. Yeah. Some have even claimed that Sean Combs' home was lost in the fire. This is not true. He does own a 17,000 square foot mansion in the ritzy neighborhood of Holby Hills, but his home was spared.

So nothing. Yeah, nothing about nothing about this makes sense. The tunnels remain. The tunnels remain. We have to ask, you know, something. It was like, what evidence was your home hiding? Mike, apparently. I don't know. There's nothing. There's nothing coherent about this. It's the destroying evidence in a massive wildfire would actually be the worst way to destroy evidence because you can't.

actually guarantee what's going to burn. I mean, unless you're using the laser to target sort of specific homes, but it seems like a little bit of overkill when you can just like send a couple of guys down into the tunnels and, you know, maybe dynamite them.

and not go to all of the expense of burning down an entire city to maybe get a couple of flash drives or something. It seems a bit much. Yeah, it's like, when I want to destroy evidence, I do it in such a way that garners worldwide media attention and triggers federal investigations.

Another major claim being bounced around is the sort of claim that seems to like pop up every single time there's a major fire, which is that basically the fires are actually part of a plot to clear land for development purposes.

In this case, the plot was supposedly part of a plan to accelerate the development of Los Angeles into a smart city or possibly to make space for Summer Olympics in 2028. This is so good because for Mel Gibson, it's depopulating the state. For others, it's development of a smart city, the high-speed rail. Clearly, the cabal has not figured out what they want to do with California yet.

For example, this is from a TikTok video that got nearly 200,000 likes and over 7,000 comments. Please, for the love of God, tell me that I'm wrong. Did you know that in 2028, the Olympics is going to be held in Los Angeles County? But not just Los Angeles County, but it includes all of the northern regions of Los Angeles County. Places which include the Pacific Palisades, the San Fernando Valley, and Altadena.

with just so happens to be the place that is burning right now. Bitch, bitch, not even the fucking Mexicans here are calling it that. Where are you at? Michigan ass motherfucker. Where the fuck are you recording this from? I believe he also called it the Santo Fernando Valley. And

El Santo. Yeah. And anytime you hear that background sound that like, you know, you know, you know, you're in for some absolute shit. Yeah. Tell me I'm schizophrenic and insane for the love of God. Tell me I'm wrong. You're wrong. You're wrong. You're dead wrong. I will gladly. Yeah.

First of all, I don't understand why the powers that be would want to burn parts of L.A. that will be used by the Olympic Games. At no point in this video does he explain the plot, basically. What exactly is happening? It just says that, well, you know, they're going to be used by the Olympics and they're burning. Coincidence? And the other part is that, like, you know, I could actually find no evidence that the plans for the Olympics involve Altadena. He appears to have made that part up. Well, no, it's not actually part of it, but Alta.

Yeah, exactly. That's like the upside down version of Altadena. I'm hearing that they're going to be calling it the Juegos Olímpicos. Fuck, man.

Why does that guy have all of his hair? That's a fucking good question. Oh, here we go. Here we fucking go. These conspiracy guys, they show up on TikTok. Their brains are absolutely cooked. Somehow, full head of- Jake, the guy looks like a rectangle, like your hair, Tyler. Like, chill out about the fucking hair, man. Nope, sorry. The shot put was going to be in my backyard. Yeah, yeah.

We were building it out a little bit. I mean, it's just it's so insulting to the people who actually live in these communities to decide that we are nothing more than pawns in the various cartoonish schemes of the elders of Zion who some of this land needs to be cleared because we need to put in room for hurdles for the Olympics.

Other parts of it need to be cleared so that we can get rid of the evidence of P. Diddy. We need to put some Stack'em and Pack'em towers over there. We need to get rid of Mel Gibson's house over there so that Oprah could build her beach room. It's so, it just reduces all of the people, all of the many, many stories and many tragedies that are showing up in my text chains every day. It just reduces us all to sort of

you know, pieces in a game of risk that are getting pushed around a board. It's so unbelievably unhelpful to the people who are actually going through this. You've been hearing from Altadena resident Miguel Rochil.

I checked. So part of Pacific Palisades actually will be used for the Olympic Games. Specifically, Olympic Gulf will be hosted by the Riviera Country Club. So this this area actually was inside of the evacuation zone, but was ultimately spared by the fires. Again, the video doesn't explain how this plot makes sense. Where is the connection between the fires and the Olympic plans?

I was like, I don't, it's like, why, if you're hosting the Olympics, yeah, I mean, it's actually, it's like, it's a bit of a source of, you know, not, not pride that fires wound up being so destructive. So I don't understand how this plot makes any sense. We're going to have the world's eyes on our city. So let's make sure as much of it as possible looks blackened and shitty and burned out and looking like escape from New York. Yeah.

Hey, yeah, you're laughing now, but once they fucking build the Olympic city over all the carcasses of houses in Pacific Palisades. In our banana. In our banana. Guys, we want to make sure that our athletes cannot breathe, okay? We want to make sure that the athletes have the worst quality air possible so that they can perform their worst. This does remind me of the Seine in Paris, the river where they made the people swim and then they had to give them like

they all caught a bunch of horrible diseases from it. You thought the vomiting from the Seine River was bad. Oh, you're going to love the fucking coughing up a black hairball from running the hurdles. Oh, man. Oh, but fuck the Olympics anyways. I do. I will say that. But yeah.

For other reasons than these fucking freaks think. I mean, yeah, my always biggest problem with like a lot of like conspiracy theories is like how underdeveloped they are. I feel like they're not even a complete story. You know, they're not even they're not even internally. They don't even make for good fiction. Like in this case, it's like it's like if you're going to come up with a conspiracy theory, at least have some sort of a little bit of internal consistency with.

within your narrative. But yeah, but this is like, hell no. Yeah, this is just all just pretty weak sauce. Yeah, and I will say that because, you know, I've been talking about this a lot in the conversations that I've been having with other people in my neighborhood and the Facebook groups and the text chains. No one is talking about any of this stuff. No, of course not. We are all focused on

Hey, when are the schools going to reopen? You know, can we get more? Can we get PPE to sift through the wreckage of our houses? Do you know a good architect? Hey, there's going to be a gathering in the park and we need more tables. None of this stuff does anything.

Oh, yeah. Anybody going through this? Yeah. The city has been going through an incredible effort to provide mutual aid to any and all evacuees. It's been truly heartwarming. And just the opportunities to participate in helping people out are so

Yeah.

Yeah, Mike, thank you so much for coming on the show again. So I would encourage all listeners to pick up Mike's two most recent books if they haven't already, because they are absolutely essential for understanding conspiracy theories, both contemporary and historical. So the first is, you know, The Storm is Upon Us, which is the most cited text on QAnon. Like when academics, legal professionals or policymakers want to understand QAnon, they turn to Mike's book.

And I think it is certainly true that this is the book that historians of the future will turn to in order to understand American conspiracism during the Trump era and beyond. Excuse me, Travis. If they can't read, they turn to our podcast, OK? The illiterate love us. God damn it.

It sounds like something Trump would say. All right. And of course, yes, I also recommend picking up Mike's book, Jewish Space Lasers, which is about the history of Rothschild conspiracy theories and more generally anti-Semitism over the past couple hundred years. Again, this is the most accessible and most authoritative text on the subject. Check out the show notes on this episode for links for buying these books. You can get them hardcover, Kindle, audiobook if you like listening, and yeah,

By reading them, you will have a more comprehensive and sophisticated understanding on modern and historical conspiracy theories than 99% of people. And at the same time, you'll be helping out Mike and his family get back on their feet. Thank you. Thank you, guys. It's been a real blast. And if people are so interested, I'm writing about this experience on my website. It's themikerothchild.com.

I've got a Patreon going because I don't know when I'm going to be able to work again otherwise. And it's Patreon slash Mike Rothschild. And all of it is linked pretty much everywhere. So I really appreciate you guys having me on. It's been really cathartic for me.

Patreon.com slash Mike Rothschild. You heard it, folks. Thank you so much for coming on again, Michael. And thank you, listener, for listening to another episode of the QAA podcast. If you want a second episode every week, you can go to Patreon.com slash QAA for five bucks. You will get that and access to our entire archive of premium episodes. For everything else, we've got a website, QAApodcast.com.

Listener. Until next week. May the... May Altadena bless you and keep you. I was going to ask Mike to be like, dude, let's do something fucking hopeful. Listener, until next week, Altadena will rebuild. And then you're like, May Altadena bless you and keep you. No, that's the way to go. Callate, hey. Callate. Oh. Oh.

We have auto-cued content based on your preferences. - There's an unbelievable brain drain and resource drain in California. It has now strengthened the red state.

And to John's point, it's like maybe once Trump's in, the feds do have to come in and be like, no more. If we're the United States, we got to do something about this. No, I tweeted this on X or whatever it's called at this point. But imagine this was happening in Florida. Imagine our fire hydrants were empty and it was DeSantis walking around the state going like this. I just, you know,

You know, I think that there would be basically like troops on our door waiting to get rid of DeSantis. It's really it's gotten so insane that they're getting a pass for this mismanagement. Elon Musk talking about this so long ago and Donald Trump talking about this so long ago and all of us knew that they needed to cut down this this these dry, dead trees and make a better situation because they're so prone to fires. It's.

scary that they didn't do that because of, you know, possibly some fish or some some environmental issue that they had a problem with. I am afraid for the future in places like this. I'm actually a lover of California. I loved L.A. before it was destroyed. I love California, the state. It's so beautiful.

The fact that they have managed to bring this state to its knees and yet Gavin Newsom is still not, is still considered presidential material. He's still up in the running for 28. I think all of that is crazy. And I would love to see a, you know, again, going back to these leftists who are opening their eyes, I'd love to see them take this lesson and really apply it moving forward and say we can no longer live by these leftist policies because look what happened.