{"id":334659,"date":"2026-01-08T15:08:38","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T20:08:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/truthout.org\/?post_type=to4_video_post&#038;p=334659"},"modified":"2026-01-08T15:08:42","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T20:08:42","slug":"a-year-after-la-fires-dont-forget-how-trump-and-musks-lies-hurt-recovery","status":"publish","type":"to4_video_post","link":"https:\/\/truthout.org\/video\/a-year-after-la-fires-dont-forget-how-trump-and-musks-lies-hurt-recovery\/","title":{"rendered":"A Year After LA Fires, Don&#8217;t Forget How Trump and Musk&#8217;s Lies Hurt Recovery"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"truth-post-content-before\" id=\"truth-2261346622\"><div class=\"popmake-campaign-banners-donate-modal callout callout inline-callout mb-5 callout--text callout--text\" id=\"truth-304042\" data-callout-id=\"304042\" data-callout-theme=\"text\" data-callout-placement=\"Undefined\" data-callout-title=\"BCB 304042 Truthout is a vital news source\"><p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Truthout is a vital news source and a living history of political struggle. If you think our work is valuable, <\/span><\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/support.truthout.org\/-\/XXQLBDSX\/&amp;utm_source=truthout&amp;utm_medium=bcb&amp;utm_campaign=304042\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">support us with a donation<\/span><\/i><\/a><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> of any size.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p>We speak with journalist Jacob Soboroff about his new book and ongoing reporting about the Los Angeles fires one year ago, when destructive infernos razed entire neighborhoods, killing 30 people and displacing over 100,000 more. The book <em>Firestorm: The Great Los Angeles Fires and America\u2019s New Age of Disaster<\/em> provides a detailed look at how the fires unfolded, the emergency efforts and the political response. Soboroff, who grew up in the area, describes seeing the charred remains of his own childhood home while misinformation from Donald Trump, Elon Musk and other powerful figures was \u201cpouring rhetorical fuel on the flames of the very real fire.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">TRANSCRIPT<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AMY GOODMAN:<\/strong> This is <em>Democracy Now!<\/em>, democracynow.org. I\u2019m Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonz\u00e1lez.<\/p><div class=\"truth-post-content-high\" id=\"truth-1009691794\"><div class=\"callout inline-callout p-4 mb-5 callout--subscribe callout--dark\" id=\"truth-255396\" data-callout-id=\"255396\" data-callout-theme=\"dark\" data-callout-placement=\"Post Content - High\" data-callout-title=\"Don&#039;t miss a beat\"><h2>Don&#8217;t miss a beat<\/h2>\n<p>Get the latest news and thought-provoking analysis from <em>Truthout<\/em>.<\/p>\n<script>\nvar gform;gform||(document.addEventListener(\"gform_main_scripts_loaded\",function(){gform.scriptsLoaded=!0}),document.addEventListener(\"gform\/theme\/scripts_loaded\",function(){gform.themeScriptsLoaded=!0}),window.addEventListener(\"DOMContentLoaded\",function(){gform.domLoaded=!0}),gform={domLoaded:!1,scriptsLoaded:!1,themeScriptsLoaded:!1,isFormEditor:()=>\"function\"==typeof 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More than 30 people died, over 100,000 displaced. Some 16,000 buildings and homes were destroyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the fires burned, then-<em>MSNBC<\/em> correspondent Jacob Soboroff was on the ground reporting about the neighborhood where he grew up. This is an excerpt from a report he filed after discovering the home he was born in had burned down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p><strong>JACOB SOBOROFF:<\/strong> This is the first time that I\u2019ve seen the house that I grew up in, and I don\u2019t really know what to say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mom? Look at this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>PATTI SOBOROFF:<\/strong> Is that Frontera?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JACOB SOBOROFF:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>PATTI SOBOROFF:<\/strong> Our \u2014 your birth house?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JACOB SOBOROFF:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>PATTI SOBOROFF:<\/strong> Oh, I\u2019m so sad. Every one of you guys was born in that house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JACOB SOBOROFF:<\/strong> I know. It makes me \u2014 it makes me sad, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This was a really, really special place for the Soboroff family, and I\u2019m very sorry to see it go. And I\u2019m very sorry for all of the residents of Pacific Palisades and everyone across the greater L.A. area that\u2019s going through this right now.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AMY GOODMAN:<\/strong> That\u2019s Jacob Soboroff reporting a year ago. As recovery from the fires continues, Jacob joins us now to discuss his new book, <em>Firestorm: The Great Los Angeles Fires and America\u2019s New Age of Disaster<\/em>. We also had him in to talk about his other book, <em>Separated: Inside an American Tragedy<\/em>. Jacob is a senior political and national reporter for <em>MS NOW<\/em>, formerly <em>MSNBC<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Welcome to <em>Democracy Now!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JACOB SOBOROFF:<\/strong> It\u2019s so good to see you, Amy. Thank you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AMY GOODMAN:<\/strong> It\u2019s great to see you. A year ago today, you were reporting somewhere, and you get a call from your brother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JACOB SOBOROFF:<\/strong> Yeah. My brother says, \u201cThere\u2019s a huge fire in the Palisades.\u201d It was actually on a text thread to our whole family. \u201cWe\u2019re evacuating right now.\u201d And he had lived not far from where I grew up for most of my life, up in the Santa Monica Mountains, until I was about 18 years old. They left. The home they lived in ultimately burned down. The childhood home that I lived in had burned down, and was born into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You know, and I think, as you cover these things in real time, how do you process watching your childhood memories carbonize in front of your eyeballs? And I didn\u2019t. I mean, the answer is, you don\u2019t. You can\u2019t, especially while talking to a national television audience. And so I wanted to do this book. I wanted to do <em>Firestorm<\/em> to understand what it was. How did we get here? Is it going to happen again? And the answer is, yes, definitely. This was the fire of the future, and I experienced it in real time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JUAN GONZ\u00c1LEZ:<\/strong> And, Jacob, can you talk about the causes of the fire, and the subsequent defunding of agencies like FEMA and NOAA and the key agencies that can alert the public about these disasters?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JACOB SOBOROFF:<\/strong> Yeah, Juan. The thing about this book is that you\u2019re going to read \u2014 you know, it\u2019s a minute-by-minute accounting of what really went on. It reads like a sci-fi thriller, but it\u2019s just the truth. It\u2019s what we\u2019re going to experience more and more. And part of that story is not just the personal nature of this and how devastating it was to everybody, but what has happened in the aftermath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And you are going to read, from the halls of power in Washington, D.C., stories of government officials telling me, both in their official capacity and outside the official channels, because they weren\u2019t authorized to speak, about the devastation that this particular administration \u2014 Trump was president-elect at the time, and it didn\u2019t stop him from spreading misinformation and disinformation \u2014 but how they have decimated FEMA. Senior leaders have left. The National Weather Service, that predicted this event as a particularly dangerous situation, has lost meteorologists all around the country. NIOSH, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, has lost people that look out for the well-being of firefighters after things like this. NASA\u2019s Earth science program is on the chopping block, and I flew with FireSense \u2014 their mission, to study the future of fire and to map it using imaging spectrometry from the sky to make it easier to fight fires on the ground. I was in the Pacific Northwest, all for this book, with the Forest Service, who could not actually bring on firefighters at the beginning of this administration because of the DOGE cuts and the hiring freezes that were taking place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And so, when you look at the fire of the future, it\u2019s a confluence of many things: obviously, the global climate emergency, which you will read about in detail in the book, but also our infrastructure falling apart \u2014 the Altadena Fire was a steel lattice tower that was not even active and had been sitting dormant for years, that became electrified; changes in the way we live \u2014 electric car batteries exploding, a thousand of them, all over Los Angeles, one emergency management official told me; and then, finally, again, this issue of misinformation and disinformation during national natural disasters, the kind of which Donald Trump was spreading, saying things like we could just turn on a tap and have water flow down from the Pacific Northwest. I laugh, but it\u2019s preposterous. It is ridiculous. And those are the kinds of things today, in this new age of disaster in America, that Americans are contending with, in addition to the climate emergency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AMY GOODMAN:<\/strong> Jacob, you have a fascinating story about Katie Miller \u2014 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JACOB SOBOROFF:<\/strong> Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AMY GOODMAN:<\/strong> \u2014 getting in touch with you to see about her in-laws\u2019 home \u2014 Katie Miller married to Stephen Miller, talking about his parents\u2019 home \u2014 and your relationship with her since <em>Separated<\/em>, in your reporting on immigrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JACOB SOBOROFF:<\/strong> I couldn\u2019t believe it, Amy. Katie Miller was the person, as the junior-most press deputy to Kirstjen Nielsen in the Department of Homeland Security, that invited me into the facilities to see family separations for myself. She didn\u2019t like the book, I think it\u2019s fair to say, and my reporting about family separation, so we had lost touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But as I stood there getting ready to deliver a special report for Lester Holt on NBC News, my phone rang, and it was Katie Miller. And I said I couldn\u2019t speak, so I hung up. But before I could even call her back, she texted me and basically asked me to go check on Stephen Miller\u2019s parents\u2019 house in the Palisades. You can imagine my surprise. I said, \u201cAm I really being asked to go to Stephen Miller\u2019s parents\u2019 house?\u201d Well, just like I did for my friends that I drove in high school and my brother and other people I knew in the Palisades, I went and checked. They had lost their home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And for a second, maybe foolishly, I thought, you know, this adversarial journalist-source relationship, the politics of the past, could be put aside. But within minutes, maybe even before she had texted me, Donald Trump and Elon Musk both, her future boss at DOGE, were spreading \u2014 pouring rhetorical fuel on the flames of the very real fire. And it was very clear to me very quickly that while I had gone and done this \u2014 and I don\u2019t deserve any credit, it was what anybody would have done \u2014 her own bosses were making the recovery and the fire itself worse for people like her own in-laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AMY GOODMAN:<\/strong> If you can talk about what\u2019s happening to people \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JUAN GONZ\u00c1LEZ:<\/strong> And talk about how Governor Gavin Newsom \u2014 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JACOB SOBOROFF:<\/strong> Go ahead, Juan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AMY GOODMAN:<\/strong> We had the same question, Juan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JUAN GONZ\u00c1LEZ:<\/strong> I\u2019m sorry. Yeah, I\u2019m sorry. Describe how Governor Newsom handled this fire, as President Trump and Musk, the others attacked him online.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JACOB SOBOROFF:<\/strong> You know, a lot of people have been making a lot of his current social media strategy to punch back against Donald Trump in a way equally hard that Donald Trump punches at him. And you will read about the origin story of that strategy, actually, in <em>Firestorm<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is an incredible scene where he is sitting in his makeshift command center in Los Angeles, watching Elon Musk during a live stream prod, I think it\u2019s fair to say, local firefighters on the ground about conspiracy theories related to why there was no water in the hydrants. And there are legitimate questions to ask about \u2014 you know, infrastructure-related questions about why a 117 million-gallon reservoir in the Palisades was empty at the time of the fire. And Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass and the Democratic leaders, you know, are not absolved in any of this, either. But Elon Musk is there pushing these firefighters, that are essentially saying to him, \u201cLook, we were flowing so much water, it\u2019s like turning on all the taps in your house at the same time.\u201d This is what I heard from lots of firefighters. \u201cHow can you possibly expect water pressure to remain consistent when you have three times the size of Manhattan burning in Los Angeles right now?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well, Musk seemed flustered during that exchange, and Gavin Newsom was watching it live. And he said to his aides, in some pretty salty and colorful language, which you can read about in the book, \u201cClip that right now. F\u2014 these guys. We\u2019re going to go back on the attack immediately.\u201d And that\u2019s exactly what Gavin Newsom did. They put that clip on the internet. And he said that was the beginning of the way that he has started to deal with the misinformation and disinformation now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I spent a lot of time with him for this book, and I think you\u2019re going to be surprised by what \u2014 that picture on the right-hand side of the screen is me and him in Altadena, days after the fire, with the National Guard troops, which, by the way, he\u2019s still dealing with the ramifications of that. He\u2019s trying to get the \u2014 he just got the control of the Guard back, and he expects Trump to take it again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AMY GOODMAN:<\/strong> And the migrant workers who tried to clean up the fire being targeted by the Trump administration now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JACOB SOBOROFF:<\/strong> He said to me on that very day, in that photo, off camera, after I interviewed him for <em>Meet the Press<\/em>, \u201cI\u2019m really concerned about what Trump, the president-elect, is going to do with immigration and its impact on the recovery.\u201d We got more undocumented people in L.A. than any other city in the country. I think it\u2019s 10% of the population. They are the prime target, standing in Home Depot parking lots. Not the worst of the worst, but the people that are engaged in the rebuilding of Los Angeles are the ones being targeted by the ICE raids right now. We\u2019ve seen people run and die, getting hit by cars on freeways by these operations. You know what they\u2019re doing? They\u2019re trying to find work rebuilding homes in Altadena and the Palisades. That\u2019s who the Trump administration is targeting, as Gavin Newsom points out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AMY GOODMAN:<\/strong> We just have 20 seconds. People losing their homes, their property, they already had their houses burn down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>JACOB SOBOROFF:<\/strong> Well, and here\u2019s the thing: 40% of the homes and the lots that are selling now are going to corporate investors, not locals. L.A. is the most unaffordable city in the country, in the most unaffordable state in the union. This book will show you the fissures that lie beneath our society that are exposed when a firestorm like this happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>AMY GOODMAN:<\/strong> Jacob Soboroff, senior political and national reporter for <em>MS NOW<\/em>, new book, <em>Firestorm: The Great Los Angeles Fires and America\u2019s New Age of Disaster<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On Monday, we\u2019ll speak with filmmaker Ondi Timoner about her film, <em>All the Walls Came Down<\/em>, about losing her home. We\u2019ll also speak with the main protagonist, the community activist in Altadena, Heavenly Hughes. That does it for our show. The film has been shortlisted for an Oscar. I\u2019m Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonz\u00e1lez.<\/p>\n<div class=\"truth-post-content-after\" id=\"truth-3404247357\"><div class=\"callout inline-callout p-4 mb-5 callout-- callout--white\" id=\"truth-334871\" data-callout-id=\"334871\" data-callout-theme=\"white\" data-callout-placement=\"Post Content - After\" data-callout-title=\"2026-01 Main Campaign (FRU) Trump is silencing political dissent. We appeal for your support.\">\n<div class=\"p-2 text-start\">\n<h5 class=\"pb-2\" style=\"text-transform: uppercase; font-family: var(--bs-font-sans-serif); text-align: center;\">Trump is silencing political dissent. We appeal for your support.<\/h5>\n<p class=\"mb-3\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Progressive nonprofits are the latest target caught in Trump\u2019s crosshairs. With the aim of eliminating political opposition, Trump and his sycophants are working to curb government funding, constrain private foundations, and even cut tax-exempt status from organizations he dislikes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-3\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>We\u2019re concerned, because Truthout is not immune to such bad-faith attacks.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-3\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We can only resist Trump\u2019s attacks by cultivating a strong base of support. The right-wing mediasphere is funded comfortably by billionaire owners and venture capitalist philanthropists. At Truthout, we have you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-3\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Truthout has launched a fundraiser to raise $45,000 in the next 8 days. <\/strong>Please take a meaningful action in the fight against authoritarianism: make a one-time or monthly donation to Truthout. If you have the means, please dig deep.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"m-0\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"#XEGQPXGY\" style=\"display: none;\"><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Powerful figures were \u201cpouring rhetorical fuel on the flames of the very real fire,&#8221; says journalist Jacob Soboroff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":86,"featured_media":334660,"template":"","categories":[91701],"tags":[228983,2718,229421,551,73579,546,149032,229367,1157,50745,8465,4443],"section":[26],"primary_topic":[16],"series":[],"admin_tag":[],"class_list":["post-334659","to4_video_post","type-to4_video_post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-crisis","tag-doge","tag-donald-trump","tag-elon-musk","tag-fema","tag-gavin-newsom","tag-la-fires","tag-los-angeles","tag-misinformation","tag-natural-disasters","tag-noaa","section-environment-and-health","primary_topic-environment"],"acf":[],"related_articles":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/to4_video_post\/334659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/to4_video_post"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/to4_video_post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/86"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334659"},{"taxonomy":"section","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/section?post=334659"},{"taxonomy":"primary_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/primary_topic?post=334659"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=334659"},{"taxonomy":"admin_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/truthout.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/admin_tag?post=334659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}