Tim Sheehy
Appearances
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Well, to be honest, I'm one of the most junior members of the Senate. I just turned 39, and most senators are 70 or whatever. And that's not to be disparaging. It's just a fact. They call it the most expensive nursing home in the nation. So I'm very junior.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
They started hot air balloons on a tether up so they could spot for the artillery and deflate.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Yeah. Very rudimentary. They'd look at, you know, and then yell down corrections to their cannons. And, of course, that progressed through, obviously, into World War I, early airplanes, Sopwith Camel, et cetera, et cetera. Then, you know, World War II, of course, was the first real air war. And throughout all, and then, of course, Vietnam through the Cold War.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
But the first, during those 20th century wars, you know, we'd take imagery from, Take pictures, and if anyone's ever watched that movie 13 Days, where it shows the F-8 Crusader flying over Cuba, taking a picture of the Soviet missiles and then landing in D.C., and it shows how all the steps the guys had to run the film through before it gets shown to the president.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
You know, airborne reconnaissance was a tool of the strategic commanders, generals, secretaries, presidents. The average guy on the ground like you and I, we didn't see those pictures in World War II or Vietnam, Korea. But what we saw in our war, in the global war on terror, was a closure of that information loop to where
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
every operator on the ground was starting to get access to that information. And that was a game changer on so many occasions. See how many guys are in the compound. See where the rocket point of origin site's on the ridgeline. See where the enemy's squirting off to.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And seeing that information in a timeline that you can make a tactical decision, not strategic, not we're going to invade the country on the east instead of the west because that's where the missiles are, but a split-second decision, squirter out the north end, you know, go. So I was part of that era, and I started flying planes when I was a kid.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
My neighbor growing up was a Navy pilot, Harry Tebow, great man, Korean War era Navy pilot. And he took me out flying when I was about eight years old, and I fell in love with it right away. I'm like, flying is going to be my life. And he started teaching me how to fly, and his son, Steve Tebow, started teaching me how to fly. And I was flying planes before I was driving cars.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Got my pilot's license right away. Sold when I was 16, pilot's license 17. And I went to Annapolis, and I went to Annapolis to be a Navy pilot. Like, that's what I was going to do, be a Navy pilot and an astronaut, you know, like the movie The Right Stuff. That was going to be my path.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And, of course, I get there, and the wars are kicking off, Afghanistan, Iraq, and realized pretty quickly that me flying planes was really a selfish desire. I loved flying, but this was a ground war. We didn't need guys circling around in jets, no offense to our pilot friends, but this was a door kicker's war. And I wanted to be where I was needed the absolute most,
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
in that war, and that was on the ground. So I went into the teams, but I always had that aviation knowledge and passion. And my first deployment was RAC 09 and part of a joint task force there out of Baghdad. And we had the integrated ISR all the time. And I really saw the power of those sensor systems. And my next deployment was Afghanistan in 10. a few others after that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And across those deployments, I saw the impact of having real-time information being shared with us and then being able to bring in aircraft very precisely conducting airstrikes in support of troops in contact. And one of the times that I was injured was actually friendly fire and Apache shot at us instead of the enemy. It was a mix-up in the coordination. You've heard that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Luckily, nobody was seriously wounded or killed, obviously, but we all got our bell rung and a little bit of, you know, Nick's dents and scratches there. But I came home from that after I got out of the military, and there was a fire in Arizona in 2013 called the Yarnell Mountain Fire. They made a movie about it called Only the Brave.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And in that fire, the team at Hot Shots, the Granite Mountain Hot Shots, were fighting a fire, and the fires in the Southwest is in Arizona, sagebrush, high desert. When you have a terrain and wind-driven fire in that kind of fuel type, Moves very fast, very dangerous. All fires are dangerous, but heavy timber fires in the northwest are really tough to put out, but they don't move quite as fast.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Yeah. And so I was the last guy. This, as you probably saw, was a five-plus hour hearing, I think. It got to. So I was the last one in line. And at that point, the lines had been drawn. The Democrats were hammering over anything woman-related. You know, and Pete's never said he's perfect. He didn't say, I'm a saint, you know, I'm a preacher.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Dry sagebrush and high desert fuels, those light fuels, it rips. And the wind shifted direction. The team leader made the right decision to say, with this fire getting out of control, I'm going to get my team out of here. I'm going to move them to a safe zone. Well, unfortunately, he made the right decision, but with the wrong information.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And instead of moving to a safe zone, you know, they moved into a zone where the fire burned them over and killed them, burned them all alive, 19 firefighters killed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And about, as I was getting out, it was about a year and a half after that event, I read the debrief on it, and I realized as I read through it, had that team leader had the same, you know, 19, that's about how many we'd have on the mission with SEALs, and I couldn't, and in the desert mountains, I was like, I could feel myself in his shoes in Afghanistan, running around with my guys in Afghanistan.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And I said, man, if that team leader had the same tools I had as a team leader in Afghanistan, his team would be alive. So I started my company, Bridge Your Aerospace, to bring that capability. If I could bridge that gap... and provide that kind of data to our firefighters, we could save some lives and do some good. So we started my company. It was another veteran co-founder of mine.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
We started my barn with every cent we had, and it was classic, like, shoot first, ask questions later. Like, let's just start a company, and we think we can solve this problem, having no idea what we were getting into. And man, it was an adventure. 10 years, it was awesome. We went from two guys in a barn. We created over 400 jobs all over the world. We split into two companies eventually.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
We spun out our technology that was infrared into a defense company that shot down drones. It was very successful. We sold that and then we took our firefighting company public. We're one of the largest aerial firefighting providers in the world now. And then Little Belt Cattle Co., we'll talk about later.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
My sniper from my SEAL team runs Little Belt Cattle Co., farm-to-table beef from the time the calf hits the ground to the time, you know, it's processed, never leaves the state of Montana. And it's minimally transported because every time you move that cow, it stresses out the animal. And really proud of the product. It's some of the best beef we're ever going to have.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
All veteran-run operation there. And we're really trying to rebuild the American food supply chain because we're sending so much of our food supply chain overseas, and it's so unhealthy for our people. We're an unhealthy country right now. And we're going to do everything we can to make our food here again. But anyway, so back to fires.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And Bridger was the core of all these other amazing businesses that I'm so proud of. Our veteran team, all were led by veterans, every single one. And... And we started bringing this close air support model to Wildfire to say we can real-time infrared surveillance, giving the ground team real-time intelligence.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Then we can come in, bring water bombers in that specialize in tight direct attack, high volume on the fire. We can put that thing out and give the team the best support they can possibly get. And that's what we've done. And one of our pilots actually was one of the guys we got out of Afghanistan. He was an Afghan Air Force pilot. who, with his squadron, snuck out of the country.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
The Wall Street Journal did a great article about him and the company a few years ago. We got him out of the country, flew to Uzbekistan. As he was flying out of Kabul, they shot at his plane, shot a hole in his fuel tank. So he ran out of fuel, crash landed in Uzbekistan. You know, we're all in touch with him, you know, the whole way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
He admitted, yeah, I had some challenges, but now I have a wife I love. We have a lot of kids together, and I've committed to our Lord, and I've committed to serving this country. So they were smearing him, and, of course, our side was righteous indignation, rightfully so, defending him. And it got to me as the last guy, and I'm like, you know what? I had all these fancy questions laid out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
The team that, you know, got the noon that we're handling him all the way. Got him to the States. American dream. We get him out of Afghanistan, get his family to the U.S., get him legally set up, and now he's flying again, fighting wildfires in America, fighting for our country again. Damn, that's amazing. Yeah, and he's a great guy. But what we're seeing in LA right now is a catastrophe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I mean, it is the culmination of so many facets of just basic mismanagement and wrongheaded policies come to a head. And unfortunately, this isn't the first time. You know, in the last year and a half, Lahaina, Maui, remember? Yeah. Hawaii. Who thinks wildfires when they think Hawaii? Very few people. A hundred people dead, Lahaina wiped off the map. New Jersey in November.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Who thinks about wildfires in New Jersey? But we had big fires in New Jersey in November. We had the largest fire in Texas history, one of the largest fires in American history, the Smokehouse Creek Fire, last March. And of course, now we're seeing literally our nation's largest city burned to the ground.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
This is going to take years. To a different state. I mean, remember what happened, Katrina, when all those folks evacuated New Orleans? New Orleans still hasn't recovered. A lot of them fled to Houston. Many of them never came back. Once they were uprooted and gone, they stayed.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I think a lot of these people who are leaving the state to go stay with family elsewhere, packed up the car and drove away, many of them may not come back. Man, man.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Knew right away it was going to be a catastrophe. And actually, it was recently, about three weeks ago, four weeks ago, I wrote an op-ed before all this. Are you serious? I wrote an op-ed and appeared on foxnews.com saying, we are not ready to fight wildfire in this country. Our system is fundamentally broken, and we have a big one coming, and we're not ready.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I wrote a book about it two years ago called Mudslingers about aerial firefighting. And 100% of the proceeds of that book go to fallen and injured wildland firefighters. I don't make a cent off it. But in the book, I wrote about it too. I said, I've been fighting fires for almost a decade. Now, I'm not an expert. This guy's been doing it for 30, 40, 50 years.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Nobody wants to hear these questions, you know? So I'm going to ask him, and that wasn't rehearsed at all when I asked him 5.56, 9-millimeter, night vision goggles, how many push-ups. I was just, you know what? I'm going to ask him questions he knows the answer to to show all these people in this room that this guy knows what he's talking about.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
But I'm telling you, how we fight wars in other countries is such a far cry from how we protect our people, our own people. And when I see – I'm not criticizing the brave firefighters on the ground. Let's talk about our firefighters. You know, a structure firefighter in whatever city you're in. You dial 911.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
By national code, National Fire Protection Association, NFPA 491710, they have a whole list of codes. There will be a big red fire truck at your front door in about five minutes, 20 seconds. Every city in the country is laid out that way. And we pay those firefighters year round, fantastic salaries, great wages, because they do a dangerous and important job for our communities.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
We may not need them every day, but when we need them, we need them. And we fucking need them right away. We do the same thing with our police officers, same thing with our military. Right now, our firefighters have been staring at the barrel of a 40% pay cut, our wildland firefighters. We pay our wildland firefighters like hourly seasonal employees.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
It hasn't happened yet, but that's what they are – if we don't enact legislation to protect their pay, that's what they're looking at having. And every year, that's what our firefighting community that protects our wildland firefighting, our wildland firefighter community is constantly worried, are we going to get paid next year? Because they are paid as hourly seasonal employees.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And you look at the disparity between how we treat a veteran that goes to war. They get paid a salary. It's not the best salary in the world, but it's a salary to live on. They get housing benefits. They get medical benefits. And if they get hurt, injured, or killed, either in the States or on deployment, basically the military and the VA take care of them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Basically, we all know the VA is not perfect, but there's a system in place. Our Redland firefighters get none of that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
In fact, my team and I started a foundation, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars specifically for that, the Montana Firefighter Fund, specifically to help severely injured or killed firefighters and their families, because there is no SGLI, there's no VA, there's no Wounded Warrior Project,
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And when these guys get hurt or, God forbid, killed, their families are kind of left like, what's the big deal? I mean, what are we supposed to do? Where is the help? So it's incredibly sad. But if you look at how we treat the problem holistically, this is such a challenging problem to solve. It's actually very simple to solve, but it's very challenging because it's a whole-of-government issue.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And, of course, I asked him how many genders there were. Toughest question. This day and age, we shouldn't have to, but we do. And I reminded them that there are two genders, and I'm a sheehy, so I know that better than anybody.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Let's take the LA fires I'm talking about. For years, California has led the nation in environmental reform. There's some good things about that. We all want clean air. We all want healthy forests. We all want... healthy ecosystems and we want as many species running around as possible. I know very few people, I say, I don't think I know anybody who doesn't want those things.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
But those policies come at a cost. And this is, again, going back to America first, Policies have impacts. And if you're going to say that the smelt or the erogenous snailfish or the spotted owl is more important than the safety of millions of residents, that's a decision you have to make openly and clearly. And you have to be honest with your constituents.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Hey, everybody, I know you all want spotted owls flying around. Are you comfortable with your neighborhood burning to the ground to protect that owl? And people would say, no, absolutely not. Are you crazy? So how our structure firefighting community is built, it emanates from the great fires of the 19th century.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
So, you know, go through history, especially in America, we built our cities fast during national expansion, built them out of wood, and they built them without any rules. People just threw up whatever they could. Denver, Kansas City, Chicago, Boston, these great fires. The Great Chicago Fire really was the impetus. I think it was 1893.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I might be wrong on a year or two there, but late 19th century. And after that fire, everyone came together and said, Never again. We're done with our cities burning to the ground. This is happening too often. And actually, who came out and fixed it was the private industry.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Westinghouse, General Electric, the electric companies who were wiring our cities with early electricity, there was no code of how to run wires. You know, now you can't put an outlet in without pulling out the code book and a guy coming by inspecting it. Back then, it was so new, you just, yeah, whatever, stick the wires in here and let's go. So all these wood buildings jammed together,
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
with a bunch of wires running through them that were shorting out all the time, and these cities would start on fire, and they'd literally burn to the ground. So in the wake of the Great Chicago Fire, the electrical companies came together and formed an association, an association that today is known as the National Fire Protection Association.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And they said very clearly, number one, this is morally wrong. It's also bad for business. Like, we're burning down cities. We are going to create a system of codes to better protect our cities from wildfire.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And fast forward through the 20th century, what that did was building codes, fire sprinklers, you know, how we wire our rooms to make sure that, you know, the outlets in our wiring is, you know, 16, 18 inches off the ground, depending on what state you're in, you know. how we run the wires through conduit, where fire hydrants are.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Those early fires, what would happen is, it was before water in the cities, so they'd fight and would pails of sand, you know, and shovel on the fire. And lots of times they create fire breaks in the city. So as buildings were burning, instead of spraying water on them because they didn't have fire hydrants, they would just demolish a line of buildings behind them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
That's where the saying fight fire with fire comes from. And then start them on fire to create a back burn. To literally, they'd burn down part of the city to keep the rest of the city from burning when the main fire got there, which is a tactic to fight wildfire. Um... And eventually they said that this is ridiculous. We should be able to fight fires in our city.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
So they created a system to fight fires. And that starts with building codes. It starts with a fire hydrant every street corner. It starts with hoses that match the fire hydrants. Because then as we started to use water in cities to fight fire, you know, different boroughs would help each other out. Brooklyn would go help Manhattan or, you know, Long Beach would go help, you know,
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Anaheim, whatever. And they'd get there and the hoses wouldn't match because they bought different equipment, you know, or they made their own thing up. And then you'd have a fire wagon show up and try to plug their hose in. Ah, shit, these are different sizes. Like, what good is it if we can't hook the hoses up? So they standardized hose sizes, respirators, how to train firefighters.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And it created a national standard for firefighting that as it was adopted, decreased structural firefighting deaths in civilians and firefighters by 80%. And as you well know today, I mean, firefighters, we call them firefighters, but really, I think 94% of call-outs for firefighters now are medical-related. They're basically EMTs and car accidents.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
We've largely eliminated structure fire from our nation's regular everyday occurrence. And around every city, fire stations are located to provide a five-minute response time anywhere in the city. And within that response time is a table of requirements. Okay, it's a four-story building. It'll be a ladder truck. It's a 10-story building, this big.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
All right, we need two ladder trucks, four rescue rigs, two ambulances. And they basically construct that based on a response matrix. And a five-minute response time means you call 911 because you have a kitchen fire. They get there while the fire's still in the kitchen. They show up half hour later or an hour later.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Now the fire's in the living room or the whole house is burned down or it's moved to the next house. So time is of the essence in fire response, any kind of fire. You know what the response time is nationally for wildland fires? I don't. That's because there isn't one. There is no requirement. None.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
That's why, like last year for the Texas fires, it took three to four days for aircraft to be able to be ordered through the system. And I'll tell you why. I'm not blaming anybody. It's not the Forest Service's fault. It's not the Department of Interior's fault. This is just how the system we've allowed to exist works.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
When the fire season's over, season, it's January, and we have the biggest fire, worst disaster in American history burning as we speak, and it's January. So there is no fire season. November, we were burning in New Jersey. All summer, of course, is Colorado, Utah, Montana, the West. February last year, we're burning in Texas. Now it's January, we're burning in LA.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
So there is no season anymore, if there ever was one. But when these traditional federal systems says the fire season is over, they... deactivate all the air tankers and all the firefighters, all the engines. They lay off the fire crews and they shut down the fire stations. It's really like if this here in this neighborhood, you said, you know, we haven't had a fire here in about a week.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
We feel pretty good. Hey, mayor, fire all the firefighters, sell the fire engines for cash and shut down the fire stations because we obviously don't need them anymore. We haven't had a fire in a week. So why do we need all these people hanging around? That is the exact paradigm that governs our wildland fire apparatus nationally.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And that's why in January, there was not a ready-made response matrix ready to go for this because come wintertime, wintertime, we sent everybody home.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Oh, I'm sorry. I think it's almost 15,000 structures have been damaged. I think 60, 50 or 60,000 people have been evacuated as of today. Wow. I know some people are starting to trickle back in. But yeah, pretty serious numbers. Those are huge numbers.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
No, it absolutely could be. And, you know, we recovered plans, you know, not we, but the royal we, you know, special operations, intelligence, community, law enforcement. I'm not sure who was the appropriating, you know, agency, but there were plans recovered from Al Qaeda that had a proposed plan to attack America with wildfire.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Because anyone who's been to the Western U.S., spent time out there, you go out there in those dry months, August, September, October, especially like now with the Santa Ana winds kicking, it's the cheapest way to wreak absolute havoc on our nation. The cheapest way. I mean, 9-11 was pretty damn cheap, but they trained those guys for a few years.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
They had to hijack airliners, and it was a complex plan. Well-executed. Hate those guys, but you got to respect that was a well-executed plan. Terrible. Think about wildfires. Easiest thing ever. I mean, drive down the interstate with a Roman candle or, you know, an Evian bottle of kerosene, light it and throw it out the window and keep driving.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And the fuel is so explosive that, especially in winds like this, those fires will move fast. I mean, so last year, the Smokehouse Creek fire in Texas. We'll get back to L.A. in a second, but I think it's important for folks to realize everyone's talking about L.A., as they should be.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
But there's so many other incidents in the past many, many years that illustrate why this is preventable and why we need to act now to fix it. The Smokehouse Creek fire in Texas last year was a disaster. The local response... as usual, is great. These local fire departments man up, they get out there, they fight hard, they protect their communities, but they do not have the resources.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
A local fire truck is not designed to fight a million acre fire. It's designed to go fight a little two bedroom house fire in a neighborhood. These guys are outgunned, they're outmatched. That fire at peak spread, when it was being pushed by an 80 mile an hour winds, was burning two football fields a second. Wow. I mean, visualize that. Wow. That's how fast it can spread.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
So this isn't the perception of people. They think about a fire. It's plodding along. Two football fields a second. It's plodding along, and it doesn't burn in a line. I fought a lot of fires from the air. I fought two fires myself on a ranch this summer. If you live out west, especially if you're an ag fighting wild, you better be always ready with your—
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
picking your shovel and your Pulaski tool to go fight a fire because the hay baler, the hay rake, the swather, you'll hit a rock when you're pulling hay and it will start a fire. So two football fields a second is how fast that thing is moving. And it doesn't move in a line, especially when it's moving fast.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
The heat of the fire, like when people look at these pictures in California, they'll look at, they'll see trees intact and they see a house gone. And they look at those bricks like, how did that happen? How come the trees are standing, but the house is gone? Well, a lot of this is because the proximity heat of the fire will cause things to self-combust in front of the fire.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
So it's not even the line of the fire, it's the heat that it's creating causes the flashpoint of material to just burst into flames. And then embers will get blown by the wind out in front of the fire line, and you'll have spotting. And spotting is where you see spot fire starting in front of it. And that's how sometimes the ash will blow
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
miles in front of the fire and start spot fires that can be a whole new fire. And that's what we're getting seen now in LA is a complex fire. That's what we call a complex fire where it's not one simple fire. It's a whole area of fires like we're seeing in LA now. There's multiple fires around the valley that have been started. And now you've got a complex fire.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
You've got a huge incident of multiple different fires that are all part of the same ecosystem, but they are different incidents. And that makes your response to that that much harder.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
terrorism do we know how do we know how this started not yet and obviously one thing about arson investigation is is you know it is inherently challenging because the area has been burned um there's definitely been accusations that this is arson i have not seen any you know foolproof evidence that it was um but there absolutely has been arsonists all over the country that started these fires and one thing that has been a big issue on the west coast
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
is a lot of the homeless drug population where they're out there, they've got a stove, they're either cooking their food or meth or whatever in these homeless camps and then fires kick off in there and then boom, it's gone. But when you go back to the terrorist concept, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, this is now the most expensive natural disaster in American history.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I mean, it's not even over yet, but it's on track to be the most expensive disaster in American history. Billions and billions of dollars. And think about this, Sean. This is the scariest part about this fire. The deaths are terrible. The families and the homes destroyed. But this is the really scary underlayment of this issue. Insurance. Wildfire insurance... could go away after this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I mean, it's been happening. These fires, we have more people living in wildfire and pro-nurse than we've ever had before in America. You know, Western US, whether it's resort communities in the mountains, whether it's LA, I mean, people are building homes up into the hills, literally in the middle of fire country than never did before.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And as a result, those homes have to be insured because normally to get a mortgage, you need to have homeowners insurance. Well, wildfire home insurance has already been creaky these last few years. The foundations are starting to crumble after that Paradise fire, the Camp Fire in Paradise, California, Lahaina. So many fires across the western U.S.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Insurance companies are starting to get far more risk-averse on whether we're going to underwrite a home in a wildfire risk area. This fire may eliminate it altogether. And if that happens, think how many people will lose homeowners insurance and will not be able to finance their home or will lose their mortgage or their homeowners insurance will go up so much they can't afford to live there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I mean, this could be a crisis in homeownership which is, as you know, for the last four generations, has been the main vehicle for American wealth creation. The vast majority of Americans' wealth is in their home. That's where we put our nest egg. That's where we generate long-term wealth. We make a salary. We have a 401k. But really, most of us, our eggs are in our home.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And we're betting on that's going to appreciate over our lifetime. And that will be the foundation of my net worth.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And they're interlinked because they all feed back to the same reinsurance pool. These aren't segregated pools. For the most part, they're all coming back to the same reinsurance underwriters. So they're all exposed to the same risk. And we are approaching a crisis point where – almost 08-style real estate crisis because a third of America lives in wildfire-prone areas.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And a lot of Americans live in hurricane-prone southeast. But think about wildfires, far bigger impact than the southeast hurricanes. And not to belittle it all, but a lot more people live west of the Mississippi than live in that kind of Gulf corner.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
That's just a short trend line.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And if you already own a house, maybe you can keep your mortgage, but you almost can never get a new mortgage if you can't get insurance. They require it. Yeah. So if you're trying to buy a home and you can't get in hurricane or fire coverage, you may not be able to buy a home.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
They caught that one guy with the blowtorch who was biking off, going behind the house with a blowtorch. I have no doubt some of these, again, there's multiple fires, were definitely... Human starter, no question. I guess the point is, I don't know if they're coordinated.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I don't know if there's some crazy meth head who's off his rocker who just feels like doing it, because that has happened several times where just some jackass who's literally out of his mind, or if it's somebody who's malicious, or if it's a coordinated attack. Because Al-Qaeda did have a plan to basically cripple the American West Coast.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
They wanted to start fires basically from Southern California to Washington all along the Pacific Coast Highway, essentially, and just create a firestorm in the Western U.S. to cripple us. And as we're seeing right now, it would have worked. How would they... I mean, how would they even find out what caused this? Will they? They will. I mean, I don't know for sure. It sounds like the...
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
You know, the emergency response stuff in LA hasn't been up to par. So I don't know, but I assume they will. And we'll probably find that some of it was genuine. Let's talk California policies. You know, the Camp Fire in Paradise was caused by a PG&E gas line, Pacific Gas Electric, I'm sorry, a power line that shorted out the start of the fire. I think some of these were intentional arson.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Some of them may be utility lines. But, you know, PG&E was blamed as a big, evil American corporation. These guys didn't maintain their power lines, their corporate greed, and they got multi-billion dollar judgment. They got taken to court, basically put out of business, and, you know, you owe all these people billions of dollars for your failures. Fair. Got to hold people accountable.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Apathy. I mean, the greatest cultural threat to America is apathy. Most Americans... don't really seem to care about this country anymore. They don't really seem to realize that we live in a pretty damn special place. And not only do we live in a special place, we are so lucky. You and I, anyone in this country, I mean, you've been all over the world as I have.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I'm not afraid of accountability at all. But
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
The reason PG&E's infrastructure and their power lines was so old and faulty, the reason they didn't pay to upgrade, it was because the state of California had forced them to reinvest all of their income into solar power, wind power, and DEI, and wasn't allowing them to make the necessary upgrades to their traditional fossil fuel-oriented power infrastructure.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And for years, management was saying, we need to upgrade these century-old transmission lines because they are a fire threat. We need to be able to cut trees down around the power lines so they don't start them on fire. And of course, what does the state of California say? No, you can't cut trees down. Cutting trees down is bad. We don't do that in California. You can't cut trees down.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Oh, by the way, we're not letting you spend any more money on these power lines because they carry dirty power. And dirty power is bad for Mother Nature and it's bad for the world. So instead, you're going to take that money you want to fix your old dirty power lines, you're going to build wind turbines. And over the objections of management, that's what happened and the impacts we feel now.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And it's no different – there's a great science experiment you can do with somebody when they ask about aerial firefighting, which obviously you're seeing a display of that here in California right now. The big yellow planes that come in and scoop the water, that's what I fly. That's what our company would operate.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Everywhere else in the world, when those planes drop water on fire, you know when you take a glass and you fill it with a carbonated beverage and you pour it in quick? It fills. You know, you maybe pour three ounces and the whole cup's full of carbonation. You pour still water into your glass, however much you pour in is how much you fill.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Every other country in the world, when you see those water bombers fly in, they use what's called water additives.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
So you scoop the water out of the ocean, out of a lake reservoir, you add in gel-based additives, foam additives, whatever it is, retardant-based solutions, and increases the effectiveness of that water drops on the fire by five to six X, three to four X, depending on the, but you know, significantly. And because when it drops on the fire, it foams up and suffocates the fire.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
But here in America, we don't do that because we're not allowed because that foam might harm the white-tailed deer population or the Eurasian snailfish or the smelt or the goldfish. Well, we don't want that stuff poured in our forests, so that's bad. We don't like- That's throughout the entire US? Yes. You are prohibited. Not like you're not encouraged not to do it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
You are prohibited from putting those things in your airplanes. It's like the rest of the world fights this way because it's more effective. Now you're forcing, it's like if you were deployed overseas and they said, no, you can't carry that AR, it's too effective. And there might be a straight bullet to hit a civilian. You can only carry your side on this deployment. Jeez.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And that's the type of rules. I mean, there's many that we can go on for hours about all these different codes and regulations that restrict effective firefighting of wildland fires. But that's just one example of one thing we do in America. And, you know, it's wrong-headed environmental policies that are having these impacts. And we're seeing...
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
The thing about these fires, whether you're a billionaire, a millionaire, an actor, or a homeless guy, they affect you just the same. It doesn't give a shit who you are. It's burning your community down, and you better get the hell out of the way. And we're seeing everyone on their phones, what the hell, how could this happen? I pay the highest taxes in L.A. We have the more rules than anybody.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
We're doing more climate crap here than anywhere. And guess what? Our city is the one burning down. And, you know, sometimes you'll be fighting a fire and, you know, you want to pull water from a reservoir to go fight the fire. And time is critical, as I mentioned, in a fire. Initial attack, get there fast. Well, you have a reservoir right next to the fire.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Your turn time could be one minute, two minutes, three minutes, five minutes. Nope, can't use this reservoir. There's an endangered goldfish that lives there. You need to go to that reservoir 20 miles away. Is that what happened in LA? This happens all over California. Personally, it's recently like September. You can't go in that body of water. You got to go over to that one.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And now your turn time instead of two minutes is 20 minutes. It doesn't sound like a big deal until you realize over the course of a day, you are decreasing the effectiveness of that asset by 10x, 10 times. And oh, by the way, because you haven't put that foam in the water, now add a 5x on that. So now we're at 50 times less effective than we could be.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I mean, there's 300 million Americans, give or take, 340 million. There's seven, eight billion people in the world. Our chances of having been born in this country Just statistically, God, the universe, whatever you believe in, the chances of you being born an American are pretty damn small. And think about other places you could have been born. Mali, Iraq, Afghanistan. Yeah. You know?
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And if you're someone sitting there whose house is about to burn down and you're like, hey, over here, and the plane flies over your head or the helicopter flies over your head and you're like, oh, sorry. The goldfish pond can't use that. We got to go 20 miles away. We'll see you in 20 minutes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And you're like, this fire is spreading at two football fields a second, and now it's 20 minutes away to get air support?
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Imagine being pinned down in a valley in Afghanistan being told, sorry, the aircraft is available, but because of the environmental impact of the bomb is going to drop, you just keep holding on that firefight for another half hour, and we're going to find a green bomb for you because the dirty bomb's too dirty. Wow.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And that's what these people are, and our brave wildland firefighting crews who are underpaid, they don't get medical benefits, they don't get VA benefits, they don't get taken care of. They're on the ground, as you see these pictures, soot-covered faces, underpaid, hacking away, chainsaws and Pulaski tools without the air support they need. And we don't have enough of them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
So we will spend billions of dollars on protecting other countries Yeah, I was going to get to that. In our own country, we can't protect our own people. And that goes back to America first. All America first means is we owe it to our people to protect them. I mean, that's the first duty of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. That's the first duty of government is to protect the safety of its people.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
It's just like being a parent. There's a lot of things you need to do as a parent. You've got to educate your kids. You want to make sure they're well-rounded. Make sure they're humble. Make sure they're God-fearing and respectful. And that's all good. But guess what? The first thing you do is make sure they're safe. The first thing a parent does is make sure the children are safe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
The first thing our government should do before they worry about transgender education, before they worry about welfare payments, before they worry about – utilities before they worry about any other function, it's are our people safe? And right now, as we're seeing, you know, the largest or the second largest... It's a big one.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
One of our biggest cities that's a beacon of the American dream is not safe.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
It's all above. And here's the challenging part. Of this wildland paradigm. It is so insidious around us. And I want to be clear. There's no mastermind. There's no George Soros back there like, I'm going to burn down America and here's how we're going to do it. This is just the accumulation of decades of bad policy. Just bad policy. Forest management. At one point, the U.S.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Forest Service was the largest percentage-wise contributor to the U.S. national treasury. It was a profitable agency. That's an oxymoron. I mean, executive branch agencies, you don't earn a profit. You are a cost center by definition. If the government was a business, our executive branch agencies are cost centers.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
We raise money from taxes, tariffs, revenue, and then we spend it in our executive agencies to provide services to our people. By definition, they're not really supposed to generate revenue, but the Forest Service would through timber leases. That's why it's under the Department of Agriculture. The U.S. Forest Service sits under USDA, which is weird.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
The Forest Service should be under USDOI by modern kind of cognitive standards. But because it was a harvestable commodity product, they put it under U.S. Department of Agriculture. Well, the USDA is worried about corn subsidies and soybean prices and egg exports around the world. I mean, forests are a tiny pimple on the ass of what USDA does every day. It's not core to their mission.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Pretty much anywhere. Yeah. Southeast Asia. And there's some beautiful places there, but... There's only one country in the world people are starving in the desert and drowning in the ocean, trying to come there to become part of that country, and that's right here. And I think so many Americans have forgotten that. I mean, that's why I'm sitting here.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And as a result, what's happened is the environmental lobbying groups and the very litigious environment that we now have has shut down American timber industry. And now we buy our timber from Canada and Chile and everywhere else, but we don't grow timber here in America anymore because it's impossible, almost, to have a business model that works with American timber.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I mean, in Montana, and this connects to fire, I'll circle back here to explain why this is important. There used to be 36 timber mills in the state of Montana. important jobs for these small towns like Libby and Troy and Columbia Falls, where every town would be surrounded by big, beautiful forests.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
They'd bring the logs in, build timber to build American homes, with American jobs, with American trees. And over the years, as the environmental groups partnered with enviros in government who were active in wanting to shut down the timber industry, who then partnered with massive donors to conserve and protect wild land, they started shutting down massive swaths of our country.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I mean, Biden just did a massive grab for national protected wildlife refuge land. Obama did them all over the place where they're just grabbing millions of acres saying, boom, wilderness, national monument, national monument, can't touch this, can't touch that. And the impacts of that, some are economic. We can't drill in those areas anymore for oil and gas.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
We can't pull lithium out of the ground. One of the largest lithium deposits in the world is on DOI land, BLM land in Nevada, where that could be like, they're saying hundreds of billions of dollars of lithium that can go right into the national treasury, pay off national debt, and we're not touching it because we can't pull things out of the ground.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I've never run for anything before, not even student council. I walked away from a company I love, my ranch, my family, to do this because I think so many Americans have just lost sight of it. And so I think, how do we fix it in legislation? To Amit's question, is education. Making sure that our kids are reminded how special America is. And they've been told these past several years
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
So how this relates to wildfires is you have massively overgrown forests. Forests are supposed to burn every few years. That's part of the ecosystem. And if they're not going to burn, we need to be thinning them with logging like we did for centuries here. Well, that industry was basically shut down in America 30 years ago. It's basically been litigated out of existence.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
So now you have these wildlife areas where you can't build roads, you can't cut a tree down, and you can't run any kind of utilities because they're wilderness. They have to be left exactly as they are. What happens is you get a buildup of fuel loading. And if you haven't spent time in the forests of the Western U.S., the vast majority of them, you can't walk off.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
If there is a trail, you can't walk off the trail because there's six, eight, ten feet of deadfall there. It's largely inaccessible. Well, when that fire comes through, a natural fire is supposed to burn through the floor of the forest and rejuvenate, you know, kill the saplings, burn through the underbrush and rejuvenate, bring nitrogen back to the soil.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Now, with so much fuel loading there, and that fire comes through, it burns about 10 times hotter than it's supposed to, and it scorches the ecosystem. Destroys it. And that fire is hotter and stronger than we were able to fight. And those type of
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
environmental protection policies, wilderness policies, don't touch this land, don't build a road there, build up and make it so we can't fight fire in these parts of the country. So fixing this fire issue means we need to bring back common sense public lands management, because most of these lands that are mismanaged, the vast majority of them are public. They're owned by the federal government.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Well, I should say they're owned by the American people. They are public. But a long time ago, the concept that the American people could control these lands left. Now, the government's runs these lands, and it's run by environmentalist groups. It's run by the EnviroLobby. It's run by environmental lawyers who injunct every single decision.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
You try to put foam in an airplane tank and say, we need to, boom, they'll injunct that. They're waiting like sniper shot. You poke your head up, boom. Hey, we want to start logging this 600 acre section. Boom, no, we're going to sue you for that. Hey, we want to start mining with, no, boom. Hey, we want to build a road here. No, sue, you're violating this wilderness code.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And they litigate you out of existence. Hey, we want to use this reservoir to fill our fire hydrants. No, boom, that's an endangered species classified body of water. Can't touch it. And then you think about these fire hydrants going dry in L.A. There's a lot of reasons why. I wanted to ask you that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
A lot of the fire hydrants were running dry, and a lot of reasons for it. Some of it was power was shut down, and obviously if you're up higher elevation, like if you're on a promontory out there, you need electric pump pressure to get those hydrants full. Well, when they shut power down, that's not happening, number one. Number two, I mean, what do you think a fire hydrant's built for?
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I mean, what do you have a fire hydrant in the street corner? It's for a house fire, right? I mean, it's for one fire truck to pull up, hook up his hose, and spray down the house. So that's what our fire hydrants are designed to do. Again, urban firefighting. Our whole cities are planned for urban firefighting. Pull the fire truck up, plug the hose in, spray the house.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Now imagine turning every single fire hydrant on in the city to fight 5,000 house fires at once. Shit. The water pressure's not there for that. It's like turning every shower in your house on at once and every sink on and flush every toilet and turn your washing machine and your dishwasher on. You probably don't have enough water pressure anymore to keep all that running.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
So when you turn every fire hydrant, plus every citizen's got their garden hose on, pretty soon, I mean, the system is taxed beyond what it's designed to have. So we're in a great fire period like we were over 100 years ago when we have now had many U.S. cities wiped off the map. Literally. I mean, Lahaina's gone. Parts of L.A. are gone. Paradise, California is gone.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
How bad we are, how racist we are, how broken we are, how evil we are, how our institutions are bad and inherently racist, and our American power is bad, or the fact that we're economically strong. The list goes on, that we want to tear Lincoln's name off a school. We want to tear the statue of George Washington down. We want to erase our history and replace it with something new.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
It's about time we realize we can't keep doing this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Yes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And the best way to hold people accountable is elections. You know, California's got to wake up. Why do you keep voting for these people?
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Let's, I want a quick hit on that because accountability matters. And there is... As Pete Hexess said in his interview yesterday, or in his hearing, you know, if you lose your rifle as a soldier, you're crucified. If you lose a war as a general, nobody cares. And that same paradigm holds true in wildfire.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
When these things happen, go through all these disastrous, huge wildfires and go find the chain of command for each of them, whether it's a federal agency or a state, you're very rarely going to find, if ever, that after these fires, after these disasters happen, after it'll take four or five days to dispatch aircraft to go fight a fire, Why did that take so long? What happened, guys?
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Well, the system, you know? And how technical do you want to get on some of this stuff? Because, I mean, there's some interesting technicalities, but I don't want to get too deep.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
So here is, now you are getting to the crux of the issue with wildfire. Why it's such a big problem and why we have not fixed it. because there is nobody accountable. There is not a single confirmed or appointed position in the US government that is accountable for wildfire. Not a single one. Not a single one.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Now, there are employees down the chain who are career GS employees that have responsibility, but it's not like the military where, boom, it goes up. Secretary of Defense, you are responsible. Fix this shit now or you're gone. There is no train derails. Director of Transportation, get your ass in here. Why are our bridges collapsing? Fix it or you're gone. Planes are crashing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And that's a fundamental threat. to our existence. And it's scary that that mindset has been adopted at almost every level in our government. So how do we fix the legislation? Number one, we hold government accountable.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
FAA Director, get your ass in here. If you don't have doors stop falling off Boeing planes, you're gone. NASA director, Challenger just exploded. Why the fuck are our rocket boosters not, what's up with the O-rings? Fix it or you're gone. There is nobody in the US government that can be held accountable.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Exactly. And I'm not giving... I'm not criticizing anybody in the current government. I'm just stating a fact that there's no one to bring in, even if you wanted to. If Trump said... Fine, get that guy in. Who's our wildfire guy? They'd be like, oh, we don't have one. How do we not have one? Cities are burning down, millions of acres burning. What do you mean we don't have one?
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
They'd be like, well, we're going through the paperwork, sir. It doesn't appear we have anybody responsible for it. And that's true, we don't. Now, how wildland fire responsibility is dictated is whose land it is.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And here's part of the reason that we're delayed when we dispatch our aircraft or helicopters or ground crews is the first thing that happens when a fire starts, it depends on where, but generally they pull out the land map and they figure out whose land is it. And they will literally argue over whose responsibility the fire is because it comes out of whoever's budget.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Always comes back to money, right? This is BLM land. That's Department of Interior. This is BIA land. This is state park land. This is state trust land. This is county land. This is private land. And they'll look at the checkerboard map, which is what land looks like when you look at land ownership map in the western U.S., the checkerboard.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And they'll basically argue over whose responsibility it is. And what we need to do is cross-cut. It's like 9-11. When they said, who the hell knew this was coming? And everyone got in the room and went, No one's putting the intelligence together from law enforcement to military to the intelligence community to say, we better start talking.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And in the wildfire world, there is no cross-lateral communication that ensures that there's one responsible organization.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And that person, the people that oversee wildland firefighting, who they exist under, are not... They're farmers, they're bureaucrats, they're administrators, they're not bad people, but they are not an emergency response organization. They are not, it's like taking a SEAL team and putting it under the Parks and Rec Department.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Number two, we actually make sure we're adhering to constitutional government because the thing that set America apart that's made us so special is not our government, it's not our military, it's not our geography, although all those things are great. It's the fact that we are the first government that was formed around the concept of a free individual.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Like we have smoke jumpers and hot shots and water bomber pilots and hell attack crews and awesome guys that are alpha dudes and women like us who are tough. They go through tough training. They're awesome servants for their country. but then they work in an environment that's not an agency fit for purpose.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
You and I always worked, at least at some point up the chain, we had meat eaters up there deciding whether we were going to go kill the bad guys or not. That is not the case in this community. Eventually, the Department of Agriculture The Forest Service guys are, you know, 15 layers of grain traders and commodity crop, you know, forecasters and administrators.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And the DOI, it's a little bit better. They're a little bit of a thinner bureaucracy, but firefighters are not led by other firefighters. And the decisions are not made about emergency response. They're made with a risk management outlook and a financial management outlook. How do we do this cheaper? How do we keep our people safe?
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Not how do I send a team in there to save this town and save this community?
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Both. Yeah. How is that implemented? It's gotta be both. Again, one of the beautiful things about America is our Republic, how our founders who were so wise, designed an amazing form of government. It's not perfect, but it works better than anything else in the world. And dual track it. So the 119th Congress has to bring in wildfire accountability.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
This disaster is the wake-up call we've all been warning about for years, that we are not ready. We need to fix this. They need to bring in a real solution, not just more of these stupid hearings and commissions where everyone talks and nothing happens. They need to create a real legislative plan
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
to actually create a national wildland firefighting service, task force, accountable commission, accountable agency that says we are going to be the accountable conduit for all firefighting.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
President Trump and the executive branch should say, I'm gonna appoint a wildfire czar, a wildfire director, call it whatever the hell you want, but I want one guy from the executive branch to support our legislation over here as they craft this to make sure that we build a single point of contact and a single line of accountability So we can fight these fires because it cross-cuts the EPA.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
We've got to get the EPA out of the way so we can manage the forests and we can not have to be not scooping water from places we should be scooping water. We need to get the Forest Service on board, the Department of Interior on board. We need to get state foresters and state Department of Natural Resources on board, the FAA, who governs aviation.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
They've got to make sure they craft a specific FAR so that aircraft that fight fires don't have to go through these – like circular carding inspection routines that take them so far from airworthiness in the mission that it wastes time and grounds capable aircraft. Right now, our wildfire fighting spectrum is spread across so many agencies that there's no accountability.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
It's impossible to hold them accountable.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
That every mind, soul has its own unique destiny, its own unique potential. No other country was ever founded with that entire concept as the foundation of a nation. And we were. And we're not perfect. We've never been perfect. But we're a pretty damn special place. And I think we need to remind our kids how special we are. Because how do we expect them?
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I mean, they held PG&E accountable for billions of dollars for what they call gross negligence in the maintenance of their transmission lines that started the campfire that destroyed Paradise, killed 100 people. I believe there should be legal repercussions for mismanagement. You know, I believe there should be for...
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
city officials county officials state officials that said hey you ignored the warning signs this wind event was forecasted that came through yes fires can start but the conditions the fires start in are will impact their behavior and aggressive fast-moving fire behavior will be driven especially in no that type of fuel which is the southern california the santa ana winds come in
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
It's well known in California. My wife's family farm is that area. It's up north of Camp Pendleton area. And they, up here by Camarillo, it's a fruit farm. She has two brothers with Down syndrome and they use their farm as a, it's all Down syndrome kids work on there. And it's a way to keep them engaged and make them part of something. It's a really special spot.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
It was destroyed in November by a wildfire. So again, this is a very personal issue for me. Her parents and brothers got out, but it was a close call. But those fires moved so fast, and this wind event was forecasted. And there should have been dozens of planes and helicopters on standby, ready to go. They should have had evacuation plans already communicated in place very clearly.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
They should have had firefighting crews already deployed, ready to go.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I don't know if he, I don't know the legality, but he certainly should have. I mean, that's what you do as a leader. You make tough decisions. Well, I can't violate this right because I can't, you know damn well. I mean, you let overseas, all right, I know this is a rule, but guess what? People are dying. I'm going to break that rule right now and I'll deal with the consequences later.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
You know, if I have to drain this reservoir that's being reserved for some water reclamation project, sorry, man, I got people dying and homes burning. We're going to use that water and we'll deal with it later. And, you know, the water management is tough.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I mean, this is also a consequence of we built, we're inhabiting areas that, you know, were not designed to be inhabited by 15 million people, you know. They just were not.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Oh, yeah. I mean, him and Karen Bass cut fire funding. And it's funny. Again, I go back to the Hegseth hearings. It was just recently. The Democrats were very focused on Pete's ability to fiscally manage an organization. It's amazing that Democrats all of a sudden worry about fiscal management. They've never cared before.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And, of course, in California, they're constantly spending themselves into oblivion. Yet they wanted to cut firefighter funding, and they wanted to cut funding for the wildland resilience firefighting apparatus, which they did, they cut that funding. So they want to spend more and more money on homeless camp restoration. They want to dump billions into homeless
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
We're all-time low recruiting in the military. We have all-time low trust in government right now. And that's a product of us telling generations of kids that they shouldn't be proud of this country.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
issues rehabilitation free needles for drug addicts well that's creating a whole business i mean we know why that's happening right that's creating an entire business to house homelessness it's an industrial complex yeah but i mean geez and and folks say well we don't have the funding for this to fight fires you know that costs money
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Well, this is now the most expensive disaster in American history. We're spending billions upon billions recovering from these fires. And, you know, there are estimates out there, you know, that 20,000 to 30,000 Americans a year die from wildfire-related smoke inhalation. You know, and if you're in a valley out in the western U.S.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
breathing that smoke-choked air all day every day, it's not good for you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Oh, I'm sure it did. I mean, it's, when you have abject lawlessness going on in the streets, you know, when what, We reward bad behavior and punish good behavior. You know, when Daniel Penley gets arrested and tried and pardoned and feathered for rescuing people. Yeah, people are afraid to step up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
There was that video of the citizens intercepting the guy with the blowtorch in their neighborhood a couple days ago where he was going to start another fire. And you could tell they were hesitant to take this guy down because they see what happens. Eventually they finally did because clearly they saw what he was about to do. But people are afraid to to get involved now, rightfully so.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
They're saying, well, I don't want to go, I don't want to stick myself in a situation where I might be the next Daniel Penny. So that falls on law enforcement, who, as we well know, they've been, you know, they've been treated so poorly in places like California these past few years that, you know, they're so demoralized.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Yeah. God bless those guys and girls for doing what they're doing. Thank God they're out there, but... Man, it's tough. Tough to know no one's got your back.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Absolutely. I mean, CAL FIRE actually is a really good organization. Especially, you know, just... I mean, no one's perfect. There's certainly things that I'm sure they can and could have done better. But, you know, they do a lot with a little. But... They should have had more assets on contract. That's not really a decision they can make.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
That's a decision that's going to come from, obviously, the state level. CAL FIRE works for the state. But, you know, they have access to emergency funding. But, you know, at the state level, they have to be giving the directives to CAL FIRE, listen, you need to have all the resources required to be able to respond to fires immediately. You know, California had already lost a whole community
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
In 2017, 18, we had those fires all over this year in Nevada Front, and obviously Camp Fire destroyed Paradise, California. We had some devastating fires near Truckee. This isn't new for California. They need to be ready for this, and they weren't.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
So in L.A. specifically, I don't know these people personally, but obviously we've seen their recruiting videos and the priorities. I mean, what does leadership come down to? I mean, it comes down to prioritize and execute. One of my SEAL team leaders, when I was going through junior officer training, had a great piece of advice that he right in the windshield of his Humvee in Iraq said,
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
You know, prioritize and execute. Because as a leader, especially in emergency management situations, whether it's combat, whether it's fire, you're almost always going to have more things to do than you have time to do them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
So the most important thing of a leader, the most important thing for a leader to do, crystallize the mission and then prioritize and execute tasks that support the mission outcome that you were expecting or you've been directed to achieve. And as a firefighting organization, your sole mission is to put out fires, save lives, and protect your community.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
It's not to create firefighters that look like the people around them. It's not to create equity in the fire department. It's just not. That's a characteristic, not a mission. The mission is to save people's lives. To have a department that looks like the people you're serving, that's a characteristic. And if you want to have a characteristic, that's fine. I'm not criticizing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
But if that characteristic interferes with the mission, you're wrong. And this leadership was wrong because they were focused. And apparently his fire chief was making like $400,000 a year, which I did a little bit of research on that. I guess that's fairly normal for firefighter chief salaries in California. Like they make $300,000 to $400,000 a year. which, hey, more power to you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
We should be paying first responders, you know? But if you're getting paid that much money, you better be goddamn good at your job because that's a lot of money.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Delay of initial attack. So it is absolutely critical that we get there early and aggressively when these fires start. And with Maui, that was a transmission line start also. That's a very common cause of these urban interface fires. And there was no aerial response, effectively nothing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And I keep going back to air, not just because that's what I used to do, but I mean, that's how you fight a wildfire early. Because by definition, wildfires are usually up in the hinterland, up in the hills. It will take time to get enough ground crew there to effectively fight the fire, usually.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Now, maybe you can get a hand crew out there quick, if it's a quick hotspot and they contain it, great. But more than likely, they're going to get there and what they're going to do is maybe start building a defensive fire line. Maybe they'll start getting people evacuated.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
They might get a heel in place to start, get an anchor in place to start flanking out to one end or the other just to get a fire break. But they're going to depend on aircraft being there quickly to get that thing under control. And quickly means like 20 minutes, 30 minutes, hour, two hours. In my way, there was zero air response.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
In California, they only had like two planes nearby ready to launch on these fires right away. Now, high winds, conditions, but that's the job. A lot of it's risk. They say, well, it's too risky to fly. Well... That's the mission, guys. I mean, there's risk. In a SEAL mission, there's risk anywhere, and sometimes you don't want to take undue risk.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
But when you're watching hundreds of homes burn, people being burned alive, like, that's a time you're at maximum risk. Jeez. Don't sit on the ground. Go fly.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Thank you for highlighting that, by the way. Thank you. A lot of us knew what was going on. I didn't know the extent until you started talking about it and really highlighted it. I mean, you kicked off a firestorm, and we have legislation going on. I signed on to co-sponsor today. In the Senate. Yes. No tax dollars to the Taliban. Man, thank you. And that was started.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Well, first of all, having plans in place ahead of time so it's not scramble and, you know, grab whatever you can. Second, you remember North Carolina?
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
You know, when they were trying to get hotel rooms and they couldn't because all the FEMA employees had come to town and FEMA had soaked up all the hotel rooms and then the evacuees couldn't find any.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Yes. And they're like, oh, well, sorry, this hotel's full because the FEMA people came down from like DC or wherever, and they're in the hotel rooms working on their laptops. Well, get them the hell out of here. Send them back to their home office so these vacuies have a roof over their head. Military bases. We have a lot of military bases in California. And they're probably not being utilized.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
As you know, a lot of these big bases, training, Fort Irwin, 29 Palms, those are training bases where a whole regiment of guys will go out and train. Open them up. Open those barracks up. Put up those... Wall tents, you know, get them out there. We have giant bases out there with infrastructure, with showers.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I mean, it's not permanent, but it's somewhere for them to go temporarily while we recover this. Now, of course, once they start coming back in and finding permanent housing, I mean, we're going to be tens of thousands of houses down I mean, this is the true truth bomb, I think, that's really going to hurt everyone on the back end of this crisis, is the housing impact.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I mean, it's structural nationally. Because this will affect home insurance rates all over the country. It's not just going to be localized to L.A. This will have a national impact.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Well, thank you. It's more like condolences because it's a huge... as you probably see, you know, undertaking for anybody, but we have to do it. Guys like us have to get involved. You know, we were just in the Pete Hegseth hearing yesterday. We got to get guys like us involved in getting this country back on track.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And they should be. Again, I talked about America first earlier. And I think that phrase and that concept are so unfairly portrayed by so many parts of the American media and the American mainstream media. The people that read The Atlantic every day and The New Yorker and The New York Times. Oh, America first. It's this lowbrow isolationism. No, it's not.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
It's simply saying it's about time we put our people and our communities first. Before we send $50 billion to another country, we better make damn well sure that those people that lost their homes in North Carolina during a once-in-a-century storm are not out freezing to death. while we're sending the money elsewhere.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
You, Scott Mann, the whole crew of guys. I mean, again, we all knew about it. I was aware of the existence of this. But until you started quantifying it and driving that truth home, it didn't rise to the level of consciousness that we can let. Now we have legislation on the floor. and the 119th Congress to put an end to it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I mean, I think it starts in the halls of our elected leadership. It has to. And I think it has. I mean, that conversation happened, the American people spoke on November 5th. They just did. And they said, decisively, we're tired of that paradigm. We're tired of seeing our money go everywhere else. We're not isolationists. We don't hate other countries. We're simply saying, you know what?
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
If we got a dollar to spend, we better damn well spend it here on our people first. and take care of our people before we send it somewhere else. What other country is sending money to us to keep us afloat? Nobody. We've been doing it for the rest of the world for 80 years. Since the end of World War II, we've been the tentpole of the free world.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And I'm proud to be, and I think we should continue to be. But the world's also evolved since then. We talk about the America First construct, and we talk about NATO and our allies there. Yeah, they're our allies, and we should be there for them just like they were for us in Afghanistan. But... They've also had 75 years to recover from the economic cataclysms of World War II.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
They should be able to defend themselves, pay for their own defense under their own GDP, and deal with their own regional issues now. I mean, they've had 75 years of economic training wheels to get back on their feet. We've got some stuff we've got to deal with here on our own. So these communities deserve investment from their own government before it goes somewhere else.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And that's not isolationism. That's not nationalism or extremism. That's just common sense. And that's what, again, I'd never run for anything before until 2024. And my whole campaign was based on common sense. And common sense means that most Americans want secure borders, safe streets, cheap gas, cops are good, criminals are bad, boys are boys, girls are girls. Pretty straightforward things.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And it's not too much for us to ask for those from our government. So I agree with you completely that these disasters, when they come in, we need to be prepared for them ahead of time. When a hurricane's coming, we know it's coming for weeks. It's not a secret. For the most part, I think the state of Florida has done a pretty darn good job with that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And I actually think the federal government has gotten pretty good at their hurricane. It's never perfect. Obviously, no one was ready in North Carolina. They were ready in Florida and Louisiana, but they weren't ready up in the Appalachians. We know that. We weren't ready in California. And California's got no excuse not to be ready for this. I mean, they are seeing major fires every single year.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
There's no excuse for the complete lack of preparedness that we saw in LA. I'm not pointing fingers. I'm just stating a fact. Mega fires are happening in California every single year. The fact that this response in America's arguably greatest city was just unacceptable. Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Absolutely. I already have. We've already got bills drafted to bring common sense to this. Like, one, for example, is going to – and oddly enough, Gavin Newsom tweeted it out the other day, not mine exactly, but almost the same stuff, which was we are going to expedite – permitting for timber projects.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
We are going to expedite, you know, permits for water use so we don't have a water shortage again. You know, we are going to make sure we have enough funding to have appropriate levels, you know, of firefighters and aircraft available, which this should have happened years ago because, as I said, California gets burned every year. But we're seeing it in California.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
We're already introducing bills in the Senate, drafting bill language. A lot of partners, bipartisan, I might add, That's great to hear. Yeah. And you wouldn't believe, as I started talking about it on CNN and Fox News all over this last week, scrambling from the rooftops about this, I've had so many Democrats come up and say, hey, I want to work with you on this. This isn't a partisan issue.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
It's happening.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
We need to fix this. We owe this to our people. You know, even Adam Schiff. Adam Schiff and I probably don't agree on much of anything. But he was one of the first guys to come up to me and say, hey, I want to work with you on this because I represent California and they expect a solution.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Well, you know, I really think this is a turning point in America. I think this fire, not to overstate its significance, but I do think this fire will go down in history books like the Great Chicago Fire, like Pearl Harbor, like 9-11. This will be a turning point where, you know, there's those times in history where the trend line in history abruptly changes. And I think coming off...
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
the election, a historic election, this event is kind of crystallizing a lot of the things that have been going really wrong in this country for a long time. It's almost a perverse, terrible, Shakespearean tragedy to say on display, America, look at how dumb we've been. We've taken the safety and prosperity of our communities and we put them in the backseat of a lot of really bad ideas.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And those bad ideas, we're a free country. You're welcome to have them. But when you implement them and the impacts of those ideas are so raw and obvious and bad for people, those are the consequences, and you're going to be held accountable. So I think although this wildfire in California is specific to wildfire, I think the implications are going to be broader.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I think it's going to help us drive a lot of change. I think it's going to wake people up that we've got to bring common sense back. We've got to bring common sense back to everything we do, our foreign policy. We don't have to be isolationist, but we should do what's right for us in the world stage. That's what every other country in the world does.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
They make tough decisions that are good for their people. Our military, great, you know, my wife's a Marine. I love that we're in the military, but guess what? Same standards, combat lethality, number one priority, no questions asked. You know, our government agencies, before they worry about, you know, Green New Deal initiatives and solving world hunger and sending, you know,
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
free aid to the rest of the world. Let's make sure our country is strong. And you know what? When we want to talk about America first in isolationism, when America's strong, the rest of the world's strong too. You know, the rest of the world needs a strong America.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And, you know, I've been about 94 countries all over the world, and I was in Israel just about three weeks ago, was proud to be there with our allies, getting a first-person view of the war in Gaza and what's going on. I was there when they went into Syria. And when Assad collapsed, it was a historic time to be there in Israel. They want a strong America.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
They don't want us weak, spreading ourselves all over the world. They want a strong, decisive America. So I think it's a turning point for our country. I never thought I'd be here. I never once thought of running for office, to be honest with you. But it was... I saw Kabul fall where you and I fought in.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I saw a lot of things happen and said, you know, it's time for a new generation of leaders to stand up. And that's why I'm here. So we're not going to sit on our hands and, you know, make YouTube clips every day. We're here to get some work done and hopefully do a job and go back home to my family and my ranch and fly water bombers because that's what I want to be doing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
But the nation needs us here. You're doing your duty here, spreading the word to the American people, and I'm doing mine in D.C.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
Well, yes. What do we do? And the number one thing you do is what I'm doing. Get in the arena. I mean... It's not a glorious thing. It's not a fun thing. You want to find a way to lose a lot of net worth fast. The most expensive hobby isn't horses and planes or boats. It's politics. I can promise you that. But I guess unless you're Nancy Pelosi. But the point is, get involved.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I mean, the world is run by people who show up. It is. I mean, whether it's school boards, student, I mean, whoever gave a shit who their county health inspector was five years ago. Yeah. Who didn't? Nobody cared. Or who was on the school board. Nobody even thought of that stuff. Like, I'm not wasting my time. Well, guess what?
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
When COVID came and, you know, face diapers and shutting schools down, closing businesses, you can't go to church. You can riot in the streets, but you can't go into a church. People started, who's making these rules? What's going on? I'll tell you who's making the rules. It's the people who showed up. The people that said, no one else is making the rules, so I'm going to make the rules.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And that's how I got here, was Afghanistan. You know, watching Afghanistan collapse, being convinced, watching Kabul collapse, a nation I fought in, you fought in, my wife fought there, we lost friends there. At some point, an adult was going to enter the room at the NSC, at the Pentagon, the White House, say, hey, guys, pick up the phone and press the red button. What the hell's going on, guys?
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
This is ridiculous. Stop. This is amateur hour. And it never happened. It never happened. And for me, that was like the watershed moment of like, wow, like there is no one behind the curtain. We better get involved. We, our generation, the generation that lived through the great financial crisis, 9-11, fought our nation's longest war. We better get involved.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
No, you're absolutely right. I think any level. I mean, you got to figure out what works for your lifestyle, what works for who you are, what issues you're concerned with. You know, I got involved in politics not as a candidate, but as a speaker, as a fundraiser. And as I spoke at events and helped other candidates run, some folks said, hey, we have a really important Senate race coming up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
You're pretty good at this. Would you consider running? And I think for a lot of folks... maybe you're a farmer in Northern California. I say that specifically because people don't think farmer when they hear California, they think Santa Monica, they think San Francisco. It's our biggest ag state in the nation.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
I mean, the Central Valley of California is our most fertile ag area in the whole nation. I mean, of course, there's different, you know, whether it's grains or, you know, soybeans, et cetera, et cetera, but it's one of the most fertile areas in the country. And California farmers are at the center of this fire crisis that we're going to be talking about today.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
And, you know, common sense policies have been ignored. And, you know, when we talk about this modern conservative movement, you know, MAGA, America First, I think so much of that is misinterpreted by so many people that America First doesn't mean isolationism. America First doesn't mean nationalism.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
All America First means is the American people, it's not too much for the American people to ask and expect that the government that they've elected and pay for makes decisions that are good for them. We put the American people first. We put American businesses first. We put the American border first. We make decisions as elected officials.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
As far as operators, I'm sure there's been guys who've been through commands, but as far as I know, I'm only the second operator. Bob Kerry, Medal of Honor recipient, Vietnam seal, was senator from Nebraska previously, and then me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
We may disagree on details and procedure, but ultimately, when we make a decision, it's for what's good for the American people. And what we've been seeing for so many years now are decisions that are bad for the American people. We put the rest of the world first. We put Southern California. We're putting environmental groups first. We're putting the smelt fish first.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
We're putting endangered iceberg lettuce first. We're saying, you can't pump water out of this reservoir because there's a snail in there that's endangered. Don't touch that water. We're saying, don't cut any of those trees out of that forest because it's a protected area. Well, guess what? That forest burns.
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
We're saying, you know, we're not going to be ready to have community resilience for this because it violates our Endangered Species Act protections, and then we're not ready for a fire. So I think this fire, you know, is going to be a wake-up call for the whole country because, you know, I started my companies – quick background to how I got into fire. How is a Navy SEAL senator now?
Shawn Ryan Show
#160 Tim Sheehy - Former Navy SEAL & Aerial Firefighter Breaks Down the Los Angeles Wildfires
What does wildfire have to do with me? Like you, served overseas, the SEAL team leader. And as you know, during those war years, we got very good at integrating close air support and airborne ISR real time into a ground team. And for years, do you know when the first time aircraft were used in support of military operations? No, I don't. Napoleonic Wars.