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At least 27 victims have perished in the fires blazing across the Los Angeles area. Roughly 31 people are missing. Homes and belongings have been reduced to rubble as videos surface of owners being reunited with the pets they thought were gone forever. Grieving Americans want answers for their grave loss, and many public figures have used their platforms to address what they believe led, at least in part, to the catastrophic situation Californians find themselves in right now.

Pastor Jack Hibbs of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills spoke to his congregation on Sunday. He deemed California a “third-world state” while calling out the “horrific politicians” running it. On X, he wrote,

“It’s time for change in California! After seeing devastating failures in leadership, it’s clear that the people of California deserve much better. It’s time to stand up for the future of this state and support leaders who truly care about the people and take the action necessary so that this never happens again.”

Ideology and Incompetence

On last Monday’s edition of Washington Watch, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins furthered this conversation of poor leadership, stating that “the fires in L.A. should be causing more than fire alarms to ring. This is a wake-up call of where the godless policies of the Left are leading this country.”

Hibbs, who joined the episode, explained that “nobody knew that the local reservoirs were out of water. Nobody knew that there was not a water supply to fire hydrants in this critical area.” While the city went up in flames, Hibbs witnessed L.A. County firemen using emptied potted plants to try and “put out a little bit of a fire so it wouldn’t spread anymore.”

California is one of the “wealthiest places on the planet,” he implored. “[It] makes no sense.” As Perkins argued, radical left-wing policies have led California to be a state where “they might not know that the reservoirs are empty, but they know what pronoun to use.”

Steve Hilton, founder of Golden Together, told Perkins, “You just hit the nail on the head. … [W]e need and we should expect … competent government and commonsense policies.” But rather than that, “we’ve had the people in charge obsessed with these fringe ideological issues and this terrible combination of ideology and incompetence.”

According to Hilton, “the very basics of what we expect from government … is safety and security, and these basic services like water and power, delivered in a reliable and affordable manner. None of that happens in California because they are totally obsessed with their far-left ideological schemes. That’s why what we’re doing … is laying out … a positive, alternative vision for us here in Los Angeles in this moment of crisis.”

Dangerous Policies

A “silver lining to this tragedy,” Perkins emphasised, is that it “shakes people out of this idea that … these delusional policies of the Left are harmless.” We “shouldn’t have to go down this path,” he added, but “the idea that your fire chief has been out promoting the fact that she started the first diversity initiative in the fire department. Well, that’s great if everything is fine. But when things start to burn, people realise that costs us dearly.” Could these fires be an “opportunity for a sea change?”

Both Hibbs and Hilton “hope” change lies ahead. As Hibbs said, “It turns out that ‘DEI’s actually spelled ‘D-I-E.’ That’s what’s going on. It leads to death.” And “it’s so interesting,” added Hilton, because “this is the kind of thing we’ve been focusing on.” He explained how they were speaking with a retired L.A. firefighter who also acknowledged how the poor leadership and misplaced DEI-related priorities led to an unprepared firefighting department.

Allegedly, countless firefighters from the state firefighting organisation are “all saying the same thing, [that] it’s ‘not complicated. We know how to do this. We used to do this,’” Hilton observed. “We used to have good governance in California, competent leadership that got things done and then let people live their lives, let families build their lives, let businesses do what they want to do. That’s what California was all about.” And “When was it like that?” Hilton asked. “When Republicans were in charge. That’s the honest truth.”

As Hilton went on to say,

“The real point of hope for everyone is … [that the current circumstances have] shone a spotlight on all these failures. You’ve got these Democrat[ic] politicians now going on about red tape and bureaucracy as if they’ve just discovered it. Well, we know, and we’ve been going on about it for years. They’re making our arguments for us. They are digging their own grave.”

Moving forward, Hilton contended,

“What’s going to be happening in the weeks and months and years ahead, as we focus on helping Los Angeles recover, we also need to focus on helping California recover and get back to what it used to be and what it can be again. [That is] only going to happen if people change the way they vote. I’m now very confident that that’s going to happen.”