Career politicians have making excuses down to a fine art and trying to explain why there wasn't water.

Nobody wants to excuse why they lost their home, why they lost their business.

The reality is they were not prepared enough.

The reality is we all got the warnings of disastrous, catastrophic winds that could kill people

that were issued, and the preparation just wasn't right. It wasn't enough. And this malarkey about

fire hydrants are intended for homes and not for wildfires like this. My God, what an excuse to make. And this is a region that has a history of fires.

So it wasn't breaking news that there may be a fire here.

And because of the negligence of our government leaders and our government officials,

we have the Santa Monica Mountains, the density of that brush was fuel just waiting to explode.

And that's when it did.

It's Tuesday, July 22nd, 2025, and welcome back to Goodfellows, a Hoover Institution broadcast,

examining social, economic, political, and geopolitical concerns. I'm Bill Whalen. I'm a Hoover Distinguished Policy Fellow, and I'll be your moderator today. I have a good news to report. We have a full complement of good fellows in the House. That includes, of course, the historians for Neil Ferguson, economist John Cochran, and former presidential national security advisor, geostrategist, best-selling author, Lieutenant General, H.R. McMaster. Gentlemen, good to see you. I hope your summers are going well. So we have two topics to address today. We're going to talk about the war in Ukraine, which is now reached its 41 month, 41 month mark, incredibly enough. But first, we're going to talk about the state of big cities in America.

I know something John Cochran is particularly willing to get into him. It gets into all

interesting questions about despondency and really how to run a city and so forth. And joining

us for the conversation is Rick Caruso. Rick Caruso is the founder and executive chairman of

Caruso, one of the largest privately held real estate companies in the United States.

In 2022, Mr. Caruso was the runner-up in Los Angeles's mayoral election.

Remember, he may run again. Maybe he'll share his plans with us. We can ask.

But we thought he'd be the ideal yesterday. He sheds some light on what's going on in America's big cities.

Choices voters are making, plus the question of how to end such chronic dysfunction, homelessness, ballot outcomes in public education, and in the case of Rick

Caruso's beloved Los Angeles, is city's terrible response to wildfires early this year.

Rick Caruso, welcome to Goodfellows.

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