This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI AM six forty, the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. President Biden is addressing the cease fire deal that has just been forged between Israel and Hamas.
Here we we'll dip in for a minute.
Strongest supporter Iran launched the tax in Israel, and those attacks failed. After my administration organized the Coalition of nations to stop them, and after I ordered the US ships and planes to come to Zita's defense.
We also shaped Israel's.
Strong and calibrated response, destroying Iran's air defenses but avoiding an escratory cycle of an all war. The United States also organized the coalition of twenty countries to stand up to a tax by the Huthis, including their missile attacks in Israel. Then Hesblah, another Hamas' strongest backers, was significantly
weakened on the battlefield, and this leadership is destroyed. With our support, Israel negotiated cease fire with them, and after that Lebanon finally elected a new president who's not who's not beholding hesblog and he can begin a new chapter for the Lebanese people. All told these developments in the region, which the United States helped to shape, change the equation. And so now the terror network that once protected and sustained to Moss is far weaker. Iran is weaker. Iran
is weaker than it has been in decades. Hesblaw is badly degraded. And after more than fifteen months of war, A Moss's senior leaders are dead, thousands of MOSS fighters are dead, and the military formations have been destroyed. With nowhere to turn, Moss finally agreed to releasing hostages. You know, there was no other way for this war to end than with a hostage deal. And I'm deeply satisfied this day has come, finally come for the sake of the people Israel and the families waiting in agony.
So that's a bit of Joe Biden. And what essentially he's saying is that there was the drip drip, and you might expect that it comes from this perspective of American support in the Middle East, such that there were pressure on there was pressure a on those involved directly
with the hostagens. And also he identified the whot easing diues, identified a Husbal Law and Iran and he's saying, look, we in America, through my administration, which is what you'd expect this president to say, put pressure on all of these other groups through American support for Israeli military incursions, and that all helped collectively to bring this about. Now again, there'll be a bunch of different interpretations on this, but that's essentially what Joe Biden is saying right now.
Yeah, in phase one the last six weeks, and that will include US hostages being released. Within that first phase, you talk about the administration, the administration that has four days left on its watch, because of course the Trump administration comes in and we know how strong he has been in his words when it comes to the Israel Hamas War and also Ukraine and Russia.
So we'll keep a watch on this.
In the meantime, we're going to get back to our coverage of the wildfires in southern California. We've been talking to people who have lost everything in all of this. We want to hear another man's perspective because he saw his home in the Palisades burn. He watched it literally play by play from his Tesla camera.
He wasn't at home.
He has a wife and two kids three and five years old. Those little girls were at school. He was out of town at a convention for work, and meanwhile this all erupted. James Borrow is on the line now, James, good to have you.
Oh your car, his car was parked in front of the house.
James, you can you can take it from there?
Yeah, yeah, Well the thanks for having me on there. I mean, I think, yeah, I guess in terms of of actually seeing it, you know that the whole day was kind of just obviously you're a crazy day. But starting at like ten thirty am, my wife actually saw a bunch of smoke coming out of the mountains. I think I was actually on a plane heading to the lot of things that morning, and so she had tactically said this looks bad, and so she went ahead and I learned of the schools and got our kids out
of school really early in the morning. So we were really fortunate that she was out of out of the Dallas dates before even the evacuation notice was put in place, And we obviously were just watching it all day, just trying to see, you know, really what was gonna happen, just because you know, they were very clear, like everyone knew these winds were coming, you know, like we could talk about that next, but you never could imagine that it would get to our neighborhood, which is really far
away in terms of just in terms of just you know, it's like a ten to fifteen minute drive from where it started. And anyway, as the day got worse, it became pretty clear that this is getting out of control, and so I went to the airport trig get a flight home, and a friend said, go ahead and check
your car. You know, it has cameras on it. And so my car was parked across the street and I logged into my car, and literally within two minutes of pulling up those cameras, I saw a flame jump from our neighbor's house to our sideyard, to the garage and then engulfed the whole house. At this point, that was like maybe seven thirty pm. And yeah, I watched the whole thing. Obviously, it's a real experience. And even to this day, I've not been back up there, but I
could still log into my car and check. And so I've been trying to why.
Yeah, because the evacuation is own. Just to be clear, it's there was the evacuation zone is still such that you can't even as a resident get back into that.
Area, correct.
Yeah. Yeah. We attempted the other day to get up there. It was a five Well I waited five hours and was not able to go. I know people that were there for like thirteen hours, and so it's been the only way to really kind of check in for me. Other people have got up there, I think with people that you know, affiliated with the press, they were able to.
So we've seen.
Videos obviously, but yeah, yeah, so it was really really really crazy experience.
Yeah, to see it live on your Tesla camera.
You know, I've mentioned before that, you know, we were in the Getty fire in our neighborhood burned. I lost my house and I also had a Tesla parked in front, and but back then they were the old school teslas and you had to go in and get the chip out to see it, so it took a long time. I just it occurred to me days later that I could get it. When I finally got in, I got that chip and watch it. Afterward. We had secure cameras at the house and I could see the embers. It
was almost like a snow globe. I could see these embers coming up all around the house. So I watched it also through security cameras that were at the house. But to see it from across the street from your car, it had to be because again it wasn't after the fact, you were seeing it as it happened. I can only imagine it was an emotional experience as well to watch that.
Yeah, I mean the motion obviously is it's profound.
I'm sure.
Yeah. And we lived a few blocks away from the fire station. Obviously, you know at that point the station and the trucks were all over the place. And by no means I like, you know, blame the fire department, but it was just one of the things when you know, even as the day was unfolding, in my head, it was like I lived so close to the fire station, like eventually that you think there'd become you just assumed that just proximity that that you were safer and and this just wasn't the case.
Where does your frustrations lie now?
I mean I know that you are you're understanding, but you're frustrated that you can't go into your property. I know a lot of people feel that way. I've heard from a lot of homeowners, and your shoes. Where does your frustration lie? Just though, as you're picking up the pieces and sort of looking back on what happened.
Without as local government, it's totally inept and competent with the communication from the government has been horrible.
You know.
The most valuable sort of infrastructure that we've had up until now it's been a week, has been WhatsApp. And all the neighbors and friends are self organizing. I mean, there are WhatsApp groups for how to handle lawyers and whatspp groups for a state farm. And you know this, you know, and I think people don't quite It's hard for them to wrap their heads around how devastating this is like for the community. Like, you know, my entire neighborhood is gone. My five year old's school has gone,
My three year old's preschool has gone. The place that they got art class has gone, the place music class has gone, place through which the gymnastics is gone, The library's gone. You know, I'm forty years old. I have a bunch of friends my age, you know, little kids that live there. Every single one of their houses has gone. I don't have a single friend with a house anymore. So it's just you can't like you can't fathom how
widespread it is. And I would say just in terms of frustration, you know a lot of people are pointing out the insurance companies to be fair to them. They told us they were dropping us, right, there were sixteen hundred of us that were state farm insured. And you know, over the last few months, they were transparent. They got us into the fair plan. I had to pay you know, four hundred percent more, which is ridiculous, but at least
they were I think transparent. The local officials knew that all of us had been dropped, and they did not go ahead and say, Okay, my citizens now are at elevated risk. Let check the water pressure, Let's make sure that the fire engines are being worked on, Let's make sure the reservoirs filled. So it is you know, yeah, my take is a low government. Basically, it's been like a facade, like they were playing government and like this is just you can't imagine incompetent it is.
Yeah, this is when you need government.
James Borrow, we're out of time, but your story is honestly one and your perspective that's shared by so many Angelinos. I wish you so well. Building back your life, and I am so grateful on behalf of all of us at KFI for you sharing your story.
Thank you, thank you.
James Nice.
Yeah, just astounding talking about the Israel and Hamas deal from time to time. We carried the remarks of the president live. And the new president and Trump administration begins on Monday, and I'm sure there will be conversations around to what degree that incoming administration was having an effect on fast tracking negotiations which had been under way.
For so long, Yeah, putting the pressure on.
And then also he says he's going to stop the war in Ukraine immediately, so we'll see what happens there as well.
Yeah. Obviously we're focusing on the fire. And one of the aspects of Los Angeles and Southern California fires and disasters generally is that they're populated by celebrities.
It's an odd fact and it's a weird thing.
In the grim desperation of so many who've been displaced, who've lost to everything, you see these stars show up, you know, to help out and among them, and I saw Eva Longoria saw well, I.
Mean, Jennifer Garner was out there.
And probably the highest profile in the middle of it all was Gutenberg, you know, saying, you know, we've got to move these cars out of the way. That was during the entire inferno. Well, Jay Leno showed up yesterday and he brought his Hey, Bronnie's, you know, it's fire engine from nineteen forties. I think that was the idea, was he was. They're not just for the personal appearance. He was serving food.
You came by to drop off some supplies.
We're cooking for the for the crew, and well, you guys, if you're hungry, we got we've got a big barbecue going because you know, we're getting box lunches. We figure, let's get some hot food. So it's kind of fun. I drove a nineteen forty one America La France fire truck.
So guy's got to go.
You brought your own fire, drop own fire. It's good to have your own fire truck. Where do you live in La and in nineteen forty one forty one?
Yeah?
Yeah, so but anyway, so we've got it loaded up and we cooked yesterday in Pasadena at the Rose Ball for the crew there, and we're here today and we'll attend the locations the next two or three days.
Jay is wonderful and he's a friend of Kofi, and it's great to see him out there. And it's again one of those weird aspects.
Of you know, all of the celebrity and all of that Shutthern California.
Yeah, and of course he was darking to Anderson Cooper, right, yeah, yeah, another celebrity.
And that's truely now you emerging the celebrity.
Okay, So we're going to talk about the root cause.
Yeah, because yeah, we'll talk about it quickly, just because something we talked about yesterday and you were getting your maternity scan yesterday. I think it was lovely but sad you couldn't be here. But I thought it was interesting that they're looking at this fireworks, this illegal fireworks thing that was going on on New Year's Eve and then pointing to that as the thing that could produce this fire six days later.
Well, and the fire actually happened on New Year's Day, so it happened six days before January seventh, which of course is when the Palisades Fire started. And so yes, atf they have seventy five personnel on the scene.
They're investigating this.
This is that Skull Rock trail which is a very popular hiking trail and there was a kids, literally kids out there seen the night before.
They were able to quickly put that fire out.
But LAFD PIO Eric Scott was asked about this and he says, yeah, it's not unconscious, it's not You can conceive that this could have reignited six days later.
Fires can do that.
We will follow up on this, but that is the last part of what you just said is the thing that I'm really being educated on that something could reignite six days later if the winds are strong enough. It's an extraordinary notion. The moment has come we take a little break from some of the seriousness. Dad has called into the show.
I even miss hearing Gary Hoffman. Ever, Daddy fails.
Yeah, we need to check in Gary Hoffman. How are you, sir?
Oh, I'm appropriately sore. I'll tell you that.
Now tell everybody why, just remind.
Us so my vacation is. I am playing in a Major League baseball fantasy came out in Scottsdale, Arizona, where you come on out, you play five, six, seven baseball games in the course of the week and go home sore and happy.
I mean, how how realistic, is it? Though?
When you say MLB major league status, how dare you?
What?
What? What? It's We're playing on the real fields. We're playing on Scottsfield Stadium field, which is where the Giants do their spring training games. They have their their Winter league ball teams play here, the minor league of course, during the during the offseason, so it's legit. We've got umpires, we've got our coaches are all former players.
Awesome.
Yeah. My coach on my team is J. T. Snow Oh yeah, of course the Giants and the Angels of course. So and it's just fun. It's a blast show you you hit the ball off of t No no, no. Yesterday we did live pitching, so we just it was our first game and it was really for a lot of guys the first time they had seen live pitching since about the eighth grade. And you could tell. But
but we pitched to each other. I think as we get later in the week, you're going to see that fifty year old arms are not built to throw four or five innings day.
Yeah.
Yeah, so they may turn it over and have some of the former Major leaguers come in and throw pitches for us. I mean The point is we're not here to strike out. We're all here to hit and you know, get the ball in the in the outfield and try to move around a little bit so that that that's the Probably the biggest change is that we're not doing full time, full pitching like like they have in the past.
That makes it more fun though.
Well, I got it's everybody participating. My questions about the demographic, like what are the ages of the people who are there.
The youngest camper is twenty he's here with his dad. We have a couple. We have a brother and sister who are twenty five and twenty eight. There's another father and son. The son is I think twenty seven and dad is seventy three. I think that's pretty close to the top. Seventy one, seventy two, seventy three is the is the highest ages. Wow, and then the vast majority of people fifties and sixties.
Probably this is not your first rodeo.
You do this regularly, Well, I'd love to do it regularly. It's a little cost prohibitive to do it every year, but it is one of those things that I have thoroughly and I mean I get to go, I get a full uniform tailored to well, not tailored, but I mean my size uniform with my name on the back of.
It's cool.
I get to play baseball with all of these guys that you know love playing it as well, and it's just I mean, it's a it's a really for me. This is sort of that bucket list item that I've been lucky enough to do, and it's great. I Mean, one of the things about the sport at baseball is that there is a lot of downtime. And I know, for for people who aren't smart enough to follow it,
they think that it's boring because of that downtime. But there's nobody who tells stories the way baseball players tell stories. So every morning we get we get a chance to, you know, hang out with these former players and ask them all the questions that we always wanted to ask them, like, hey, I was at that game when you hit the walk off home runner, I remember you when you played with the Angels, And what was it like to play with Barry Bonds? And I mean all of these great things.
And they love coming out here too. I Mean, they love this game. They love the camaraderie that is just built around this game. It's inherent in this game. So this I mean, it's just it's fun for everybody.
Yeah, because you're your listeners.
By the way, you were you and Shannon, you were off during the holidays, deservedly so, and then you come back and then you abandoned them again.
And now here we are.
She went from deservedly so to abandon them again. I noticed that.
But now your listeners they know why. I mean, this is what a great thing for you to be doing.
By the way, the downtime in baseball is the part that's the only part of baseball I'm good at, is the downtime. So you know, the dugouts, sitting around telling stories. That's where I really excel. Yeah, So it continues for the rest of the week, and then at the end they're like trophies and presentations.
I've heard. I know only one other person's.
Actually gone through it and goes through it regularly, and that's I believe how they end most of these things.
Right.
Yeah, we're doing sort of a round robin. There's four teams. We're going to play each team at least once, and then by Friday morning they will have determined who is who. You know, how they rank, and we have a consolation game and then a championship game, and the championship game is played out here on the stadium field again. I mean, we have a full announcer, they have pictures up on the scoreboard each of us, They have walk up songs, they do everything that is so awesome.
Are you I haven't seen you haven't posted anything, have you.
I just think keana a picture from that. I just took this afternoon so you can see. It's just incredible, beautiful weather. It's actually and I know this is going to hit hard in the wrong way, but it's a little windy today, nothing like La obviously, But other than that, I mean, it's beautiful blue skies. It's going to be seventy degrees today, probably seventy four tomorrow. Yeah, but I'll
throw some pictures up there. They actually have a couple of photographers that are going around and have been taking pictures of games and people and you know, running on bass and batting situations.
So what position do you like? Where are you on the field today?
I've been playing third and short, switching off their depending on who's up on the other team.
Have any ground balls gotten by.
You gotten by me. How dare you again?
I really and that one. I'm gonna throw a flag to come on the guy. He's not a pro.
I mean, you know, hey, he is.
A pro.
I'm given him an opportunity to you know, flex his muscle.
I'm not going to cross reference that story. I'll just go with what he says. Okay, no error is a third or shot.
Gary.
It's so excited basically because of your excitement. It's really it does sound like big fun. So it's cool that you took.
Time out to a check in with the show, and we can't wait to have you back. Pal.
Now, I got to go back into the trainer's room and see if I can get some tiger bomb or something like that.
Yeah, get the cupping done.
Oh yeah, cuppy cupping.
Yeah yeah, that means something different in baseball.
You know that's true.
I don't know if cupping is quite as popular in baseball. But all right, Gary, all the best, Thanks for checking in man. All right, Gary Hoffman.
Thanks guys, thanks for holding down the fort.
Yeah, good stuff, Thank you, Gary. Wow, you bet he seems as though he's very happy.
Yeah, Alm, he's definitely in his element.
Really really good stuff.
You're just talking about baby names in the break because Marla is expecting very exciting. We're all kind of getting caught up in the excitement.
I'm glad you're so excited.
I like the name Mark for her little girl. Anybody right, yeah? An By on that? No, yeah, spell at M A r q ue you see. Oh yeah, yeah, you see it's a little different.
Or you know, another m name would be money because we did IVF and she caused a fortune. Yeah, poor little thing, she's gonna have a little complex. Do remind her of that bit of damager out of the gate.
So I'll tell you this quick story about my mother. I had a very tough time with my back in my early thirties. I've had a bad back, real problems with discs et cetera lower back. A lot of people have that, but mine led to a surgery. It was excruciatingly painful leading up to the surgery and the surgery itself. And my mother is wonderful and she's still around ninety four.
We lost my dad this past year, but they both came out to the recovery room, you know, as I'm in the hospital and I had this lower lumbar surgery. So I'm coming out of anesthesia and literally just and I mean the pain is really big in that beginning, right as you recover.
And my mother leans over and she said, now you know how childbirth feels.
I thought, really, Mom, that's where you're going. Got you back your first comments. You're still beautiful to come out and visit, but your first comments are yeah, so you should remind the.
You know, the little one, Yeah, make her feel bad.
This is my mom and dad paid a lot of money to have you.
It's true that join us on this earthly plane, so respect that.
Can can let me tell you this? How's this for timing? So yes, we did IVF. The company that I work for didn't offer any insurance. Most, I would say, the majority of companies don't. It's more rare that a company does, and same with my husband's so hence we pay out a pocket worth every penny. Honey beg she's listening right now. But we literally on January fourth, came home from running errands on the weekend, got the mail. I opened it up, and it is from insurance that says, as of January one,
we cover IVF costs. Wow, as of January one, twenty twenty five, and you know me, Monday morning, I was on the line to say, is there anything retroactive.
Because it's literally months ago?
Sure?
No, Wow, not a penny.
That's so many things in life that are that way.
But I'm thrilled.
Of course, I commend the company and it will help so many people because that's one of the inhibitive things about it is the financial costs.
Oh, of course.
I mean you're lucky that you had the the means to make it happen, exactly. And I guess that's what you're saying, is right, That insurance is there to help others who may not have the means.
Yeah.
So just to round out the Palisades fire again, there is the I would say it's fair to say that ATF is the elite team of investigators, you know, when it comes to investigations of this sort. And so they're looking at this area of scorched chaparral. They are eliminating things like the the blaze starting from some an electrical fire. You know, they're they're they're eliminating these transmission lines. They found the lines they appear to be intact. I think that's a fair summary.
But is that in the that's in the Eating fire.
That's in No, that's in the Palisades fire.
Okay, all right.
They found lines that were intact, they found lines that were not.
They feel linked to the fire.
In other words, so that's why they're looking at that scorched chaparral in the Eton fire. It appears that there is a link between southern California edison and the origins of that.
Correct, That's what I was getting to.
Okay, so these two fires are very different that way. In the case of the Palisades fire, they're focusing on that again, that illegal fireworks thing that was going on that did start a fire. The blaze was put out right, and they feel as though it was reignited days later. It's an extraordinary scenario and narrative that I wouldn't have thought at all possible.
Yeah, well, you know, LAFD spokesperson Eric Scott came out and he said, because our reporter out there, Matthew Seedorf, who by the way, got the exclusive video just yesterday. You can find it on FOXLA dot com if you want to take a look at this. It's cell phone video that he obtained that shows that New Year's Day fire, which ended up burning about ten acres before it was extinguished.
But Eric Scott with LAFD said, it is not unreasonable to think that the embers could be reignited six days later. So ATF is, you know, looking into that, and they've got the microscope. But yesterday, of course, of course, because it's quote early in the investigation, the ATF special Agent in charge during the afternoon briefing said, at this point we're looking at everything, the idea of talking about a cause.
At this point, everything is considered a theory.
Sure, of course, I mean they don't want to close the book on anything yet, and so the investigation continues. By the way, we had a pretty good conversation about this. In fact, my head was whipped around on this on my show, my YouTube show it's called The Mark Thompson Show, and I taped something. I recorded something last night with an eco journalist who went into how this actually happens, How six days later you could have the reanimation of these embers that were really dormant.
I mean they again, I didn't believe it.
I just thought, I'm sorry, I can't understand how that's even possible. She goes through it so if you're curious to find it on YouTube. It's yet to air. I think it's going to air in the next hour, but you can find it any time. It's up there. It's on YouTube, it's The Mark Thompson Show, and just go. We'll break it out as a separate video. But it's
fascinating that that could even happen. And the last thing I would say is, you know, we had the Lahina reporter and he talked about the parallel because in the Lahina fire, it clearly was just that they had a fire, they put it out, They left the scene thinking that it was put out and completely extinguished, and it was re animated by those wins and that wiped out that entire community.
And that's why the hotspots that are still out there in the Palisades fire footprint are so important to monitor because yes, they're active hotspots, so it's more than just putting out a fire completely. But nonetheless, even if it's just a little a little bit, I mean, it can just explode all all over again.
That's mar Letello's I Mark Thompson will continue our last hour has what's happening? We have Gary Deetch, the iHeartRadio Political analyst. We'll talk about everything going on and TikTok with plans to shut down this weekend.
If this band holds, we'll get to all of that next hour.
Gary and Shannon Show, KFI AM six forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show, you can always hear us live on KFI AM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app