Happened? Yeah, it was gross negligence. Okay, now, this happened in the dead pool is enormous. Are you going to ask for an investigation? Who is to blame here? You ask? I'm going to use your words. [00:00:16] Who's to blame? No, this. That's the word choice of losers. That's my governor. So in the wake of the catastrophic Texas flooding that killed over 120 people, [00:00:32] including 27 young campers, Governor Greg Abbott of Texas made it clear that he is not interested in assigning blame to any person or agency for the massive death toll. And to make his point, he used this very bizarre and I think, unnecessary football analogy. [00:00:50] Let me explain one thing about Texas and that is Texas. Every square inch of our state cares about football. You could be in hunt, Texas. Huntsville, Texas. Houston, Texas. Any size community. They care about football. High school. [00:01:06] Friday night lights. College football or pro and know this. Every football team makes mistakes. The losing teams are the ones that try to point out who's to blame. The championship teams are the ones that say, don't worry about it, man, we got this. [00:01:23] We're going to make sure that we go score again and we're going to win this game. The way winners talk is not to point fingers. They talk about solutions. What Texas is all about is solution. I'm exhausted. [00:01:38] That metaphor went on for way longer than it needed to. But as weird as that metaphor was, Abbott did say the Texas legislature would be investigating the flash floods and trying to figure out how similar tragedies can be prevented in the future. Before we talk about whether there is actually a culprit to blame was, [00:01:56] as a non-texan, I want to get your initial thoughts on what my governor just had to say. What do you think? Well, I may not be a Texan, but I was a former football player. High school to be exact. I played cornerback, varsity. Yeah, I had my varsity letters in football. [00:02:11] Yeah, I'm just saying. No big deal. No biggie. No, but seriously, to to get at what he said. In football, we don't point fingers. He's actually exactly wrong about that. He actually couldn't be more wrong about what he just said. [00:02:28] Because win or lose in football, the next day that you show up to practice or work or whatever you're calling it, whether it's high school, college or the pro level, you have what we call film session, where win or lose those [00:02:44] plays where you were not at your best. You, we pointed out in front of the entire team and be like, look, Lambray, you messed that up right there. Next time you're going to do way better. And famously actually Bill Belichick in New England Patriots, the most winningest [00:03:00] coach in the history of football, probably the greatest football coach ever. Famously, would even rip Tom Brady in film sessions. That was like part of the culture. Nobody was above, the film sessions. Everybody had to do their jobs. And even Tom Brady was held to account at these film sessions. [00:03:19] So that's the difference between actual people who played football and who actually hold this ethos and this idiot Greg Abbott is that. No, actually, you should be taking account and actually holding yourself and those around you accountable for this awfully grave mistake that was made. [00:03:37] Yeah. Okay. So I was wondering about that. I'm not an athlete. I've never been an athlete. But I did just watch Ted Lasso and I was like, that's not what they do on Ted Lasso. That's not what they do in any sport. I mean, Abbott, he's he's right about one thing. Like football is like a weird big deal here in Texas. [00:03:53] I don't get it. But I don't like, consider myself a real Texan. Like Friday Night lights like that is real. But like, in high school, I went to every varsity game in high school because it was just the thing to do on Friday nights. I don't think I ever paid attention to the game, but I was there and it was a good time, you know? [00:04:09] But he is wrong about, like, everything else that he did say. So naturally, there has been a lot of discussion and debate about how 120 people could be killed in a flash flooding event, and many Democrats have pointed the finger at Donald Trump, in part because the Trump administration has proposed a 25% cut to the National [00:04:29] Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's current annual budget of $6.1 billion. NOAA is the agency which oversees the National Weather Service. To be fair, though, those cuts would not take effect in October. [00:04:44] Well, they go into effect in October of this year, so they wouldn't have contributed to this particular case. However, that's not to say that reduced resources won't impact natural disaster forecasting in the future. It is true, though, that the staffing levels of the NWS [00:05:00] have already been reduced thanks to Doge. So in total, the NWS lost 600 of its approximately 4200 staff, causing several offices across the country to operate without the necessary staffing. However, climate experts opinions on whether the staffing cuts impacted the [00:05:19] response in Texas are a little bit mixed. Some said that the NWS forecast and flood warnings last week were adequate, as as adequate as they could have expected to be. And then there is the lack of emergency warning system along the Guadalupe River, [00:05:35] which local officials have been talking about for years. So since 2016, the topic of a flood warning system for Kerr County has come up at 20 different county commissioners meetings. In March of 2016, then Commissioner Tom Moser noted other Texas locations had [00:05:52] the state of the art flood warning sirens, but they weren't used locally. Even though this is probably one of the highest flood prone regions in the entire state, according to the meeting minutes. But the county was not able to secure FEMA grant funding to implement the system. [00:06:11] So it seems like there is a multitude of factors that contributed to the very high death toll, and it seems to just keep climbing. It is hard to assign blame on any one person or policy, though, so Republicans are accusing Democrats of using a tragedy to score political points, [00:06:28] which is something they definitely wouldn't know anything about. But similar to Greg Abbott, Senator Ted Cruz, he scolded anyone trying to blame their political opponents for a natural disaster. By the way, this is the same guy who blamed Democrats for the Los Angeles fires [00:06:45] and then threatened to withhold disaster aid from California, but I'm sure that has nothing to do with this right here. Also, white House spokesperson Caroline Leavitt agreed with Ted Cruz. Take a look. And many Democrat elected officials are trying to turn this into a political game. [00:07:03] And it is not. This is a national tragedy. Tragedy. Do you think those comments are depraved and despicable, especially when so many Americans are mourning the loss of their children. Okay, but one person who had absolutely no issue bucking responsibility and pointing [00:07:21] the finger was President Donald Trump. Less than 24 hours before leave his comments, Trump said that while he didn't necessarily want to blame Joe Biden for the flood, he said this. Oh my God. If you look at that water situation, that was really the Biden setup. [00:07:38] What? You know, I don't even know what that means. I don't know what that means. Okay. But before I get your thoughts on this, I just. Need to mention this. Right before the show reporting came out that if anyone is to blame for the slow emergency response, it might actually be Kristi Noem [00:07:56] as the Homeland Security secretary. She oversees FEMA, and she recently enacted a rule that any contract or grant over $100,000 requires her personal sign off before the funds can be released. So it was meant to be a cost cutting measure that she was [00:08:12] implementing for the department. But it's obviously not the most efficient. It cuts a lot of the autonomy that the department would have. So when FEMA would have started to act like sending help and resources and aid to the affected area, they quickly realized that they were unable to do so. [00:08:28] They were kneecapped and they just couldn't do so without getting Kristi Noem's approval. So, I want to go back to that Trump quote, because I read it and I was like, what if you look at that water situation, that was really the Biden setup was, what do you what do you make of that? [00:08:43] Because I, I got nothing I don't know what that is. What water situation, what Biden's setup did. It's so nonsensical. And the thing is like this river is, you know, it flows through the Texas hill country. It's a very popular tourist destination, especially this time of year. [00:09:00] It's already so hot here in Texas. That is where you go to cool off. You go to the hill country, there's trees, there's shade, and you float the rivers. And it's a very nice time. But the thing is, and this is, I think this is a problem across a lot of Texas. They don't want to spend a lot of money on preventative measures. [00:09:18] Right. And as you saw from from those meeting minutes in Kerr County, you know, they they didn't spend the money on getting those those sirens for the flood warning system, even though that is an area that was very, very prone to flooding. I know here in Houston and in the Galveston area, there's a lot [00:09:34] of concern about the Galveston Seawall, which protects a lot of the inland, places, and the island of Galveston from hurricanes and from storm surges and things like that. And it's also kind of like it's a it's a big problem because here in Houston, we have the Houston Ship Channel, which is like a lot of oil refineries [00:09:52] and things like that. So but they really just they don't invest money on these preventative measures. Because if a big hurricane did come, which is not out of the question and have a direct hit on Houston and the ship channel, which is not out of the question, it would be a disaster not just for Houston, not [00:10:08] just for Texas, but for the whole country. You know, when I hear read that Trump statement, it honestly reminds me of Ron Burgundy from one of the greatest movies ever, anchorman. And the fact that he's kind of just programed to read whatever is on that teleprompter. [00:10:24] Trump is programed to blame literally anything and everything on Joe Biden. It just doesn't matter what the situation is, what the topic is, if it has a potential to make him look bad, he's going to reflexively blame Biden, as if Biden and his administration built up [00:10:43] the infrastructure in this town in Texas. Like as if Joe Biden had anything to do with this. And it's even it's made even more rich by his press secretary going up there and saying, you shouldn't be blaming people for political points. And then Trump does exactly that. [00:11:00] Like, it's amazing that though that clip came right before, well, oh, that's cheap. That's just like the Democrats blah blah blah scoring cheap points. Oh that's disgusting. People in mourning and in Trump's like blame Biden. For the water situation. For that water situation. [00:11:16] That's a whole Biden setup. - I feel like in. - His mind. Like. Donald Trump, like in Trump's mind, Biden is just out there like, I don't know. I don't know what he thinks is happening. I don't know what like if Joe Biden out there like digging canals in Texas, like I [00:11:32] don't know what he thinks is happening. I don't think. I think he I think he knows that whatever comes out of his mouth, his biggest fans find plausible. And so, like, if he can get just those people on board with him, then it's worth it to do, even if it's the most blatant and ridiculous lie. [00:11:50] I mean, no, you're absolutely right. I remember during the polar vortex in Texas, this is like common in my mind because I lived through it. But, you know, for the rest of you guys, if you don't live here, in 2021, there was a big freeze that hit Texas and our our electric grid froze over. [00:12:08] Everything was a disaster. And Texans died because they froze to death in their homes, while our surrounding states who were also hit with similar freezing temperatures. They were just fine because of their electricity. But I remember our governor and Trump, they were on the news talking about like, [00:12:26] windmills, you know. And they're like, oh, it's the windmills fault. The windmills are faulty. And that's why all this is happening. And also it's only affecting Texans. And also there are windmills in like Nordic countries that are doing just fine and are going through the winters and they're not causing people [00:12:43] to freeze to death in their homes. But they said that and so many Republicans and people who are watching Fox News, they were just like, oh, it was the windmills. We got to get rid of the windmills. And that was the narrative that flowed all the way across Texas. And it was like an active effort on behalf of like other people. [00:13:01] To be like that doesn't make any sense. And if you just think about it for two seconds, you would know it doesn't make any sense. Every time you ring the bell below, an angel gets his wings. 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