Milton Stumpus, a Premiere Networks and iHeart Media salesperson, lost his home in the Palisades fires. He joins today to talk about what happened to him and his wife, Julie and their home which is gone. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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| This is an iHeart Podcast. | |
| All right, Leonard Skinner's simple man, and that can only mean one thing on this radio program, and that is all things self-proclaimed simple man. | |
| That means all things Bill O'Reilly, all things Bill O'Reilly. | |
| Of course, you can find at Bill O'Reilly.com. | |
| Mr. O'Reilly, uh glad you're with us. | |
| Uh what a time we have when we speak next week at this time we will have a new president. | |
| Uh that will be President Donald J. Trump. | |
| Uh we have a lot to talk about. | |
| The hearings for his nominees are moving forward. | |
| Frankly, I I don't see any of them not getting in at this particular time, in spite of, you know, democratic hostility and predict predictable pettiness. | |
| We have this deal in Israel where hostages held by Hamas are expected to be released over the next 42 days. | |
| You got the same media acting learning nothing from the election, those the wonderful joyful people over at that hard-hitting news show, The View are attacking Carrie Underwood uh for singing America the beautiful uh at the Trump inauguration. | |
| They have yet to go after the village people or Rascal Flats, I guess that's next. | |
| Uh you have President Biden and Kamala Harris, very bitter, uh trying to sabotage the incoming Trump administration. | |
| And then we have this whole issue of wildfires in California. | |
| Is there any preference that you have where you'd like to start? | |
| Uh I want to just make a couple of quick points on the uh wildfires. | |
| So I've investigated it uh because there's a lot of he said she said, and that drives everybody nuts. | |
| I can't find one thing that the state of California and Gavin Newsom has done since 2018 when uh President Trump said to them, Look, you got an ongoing problem. | |
| You're not clearing your forests, it's a tinder box out there, it's a mess. | |
| So that's a a space of uh seven years. | |
| I can't find one thing, Hannity, that the state of California has done to mitigate the threat of wildfires. | |
| Not one. | |
| Let me take it a step further. | |
| There is a science. | |
| You can go to many top-notch colleges and get a degree in forestry. | |
| I'm sure you're you're pretty well aware of that. | |
| Um maybe you know, maybe you don't know. | |
| Gavin Newsome is gonna spend a hundred billion dollars on electric vehicles for green energy, but he did cut a hundred and one million dollars for fire prevention efforts from the budget, and it gets i it actually gets worse than that, Bill. | |
| And it gets frustrating. | |
| If if I were to live in California, I'd be furious. | |
| Uh and that is, you know, a hundred billion dollars for electric vehicles. | |
| They're buying these eight hundred thousand dollar street sweepers, electric suites uh uh street sweepers in in Los Angeles. | |
| They cut the fire fighting budget in spite of the fire chief warning that they have only half the manpower they would need for a wildfire, and they still cut the budget, but they had the money for the street sweepers. | |
| Uh they're spending six hundred and fifty million federal state dollars to make the LA port go green on top of everything else. | |
| Uh we have fire hydrants that don't work. | |
| We had empty reservoirs. | |
| Uh they're not practicing the basic science of forestry, which is to clean out the brush, the kindling for such fires, and similarly have these controlled burns, with the which they used to do more regularly, and they're not doing anymore for environmental reasons, but I wouldn't imagine the air quality is too too good in in Los Angeles right now. | |
| So with all of that, I guess you agree with me. | |
| They've done to mitigate any threat of any fire uh in California. | |
| So look well, do you want to give you one little tidbit that'll probably make your head explode? | |
| I mean, I'll be glad to do you know one of the reasons why this all happened. | |
| And do you know that the reason that they stopped a lot of fire prevention efforts was to protect a little bush that I've never heard of before? | |
| Did you know that? | |
| Yeah, when you say a little bush, you know you don't mean a political family, you mean a shrub. | |
| Yeah, like a shrub, uh I mean a plant for crying out loud. | |
| And it wasn't weed. | |
| I mean, they have no problem with weed out there. | |
| All right, so they have plenty of money for sanctuary states and cities. | |
| Yeah, and they got a lot of weed uh at which are selling in the stores. | |
| But um look, when you break it down like that and you say to the people of California, are you mad? | |
| Are you angry? | |
| Um I don't I don't know if if the election were held tomorrow, Gavin Newsom against Garvey, right? | |
| Or anybody, uh any Republican, I think he might still win. | |
| And and I think I I think absolutely you'd win. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And I I hate I hate to tell the people in California, and I would imagine, you know, of the what, fourteen thousand structures burned that many of those people are gonna leave the state. | |
| That's my prediction, too. | |
| But I bet if there was an election and Kamala Harris was on the ballot to replace Gavin, and I I think there are two peas in a pod, I think she'd win. | |
| Yeah. | |
| So then you you you uh classify the situation as hopeless, and uh you say, look, the primary reason of any government, local, state or federal, is to protect the citizens. | |
| But the progressives don't see it that way. | |
| They think that their primary reason is to virtue signal and to have all kinds of theoretical programs where they spend money, most of which doesn't do any good at all, and you leave the citizens exposed to danger and horror. | |
| And and that's what it is. | |
| So you know we have fifty states and Americans can live in any state they want, but if I'm in California, I'm packing my bags. | |
| And we got a similar situation in New York, and you used to live here and now you live in Florida. | |
| But we have why aren't you packing your bags out of New York? | |
| I've asked you this question, and you heard the state of the state address by Kathy Holkel yesterday. | |
| It's it's she's not gonna lift a finger to fix the state of New York. | |
| Why do you stay? | |
| Because I got family stuff here. | |
| Um it's called jet blue, Bill. | |
| You get on jet blue. | |
| There are more flights f to Florida from New York than you could ever shake a stick at. | |
| Look, I don't have four days to fly from Miami to New York uh on jet blue, and that's how long it takes. | |
| That's the worst airline in the world. | |
| Whatever you can take Delta, you can take American. | |
| Every airline out there flies from New York to Florida. | |
| Let me tell you something, Harry. | |
| I'd rather I'd rather go in a pogo stick than fly. | |
| Um they have TVs, you take a uh a nine o'clock flight and you get to watch me in the in the process. | |
| Um I always watch you. | |
| So um now let's go to the uh Heg Seth situation. | |
| So I don't know him. | |
| Um I left Fox when the I guess he was coming, but I I've never met him really face to face. | |
| And uh I was surprised that uh Trump nominated him. | |
| Uh the main reason I was surprised was he doesn't have any uh administrative experience and the Pentagon's the biggest corporation in the world. | |
| So if I'm a senator sitting there, that's in the uppermost of my mind. | |
| Okay, can this guy run the Pentagon so it doesn't descend into chaos? | |
| And he would have to convince me of that if I were a senator. | |
| But that's not what the hearings were all about. | |
| The hearings weren't about that at all. | |
| It was all partisanship and on both sides. | |
| And that's not helping out. | |
| So I wanted to hear what Heg Seth had to say about how he would reorganize the defense department, what he would uh say isn't allowed any longer, and you would think that the woke stuff would go flying right out the window, because I think most Americans would back that. | |
| All right. | |
| That's what I wanted to hear. | |
| But you didn't hear it. | |
| You heard all of this uh stuff that uh designed to smear him and hurt him and hurt his family, uh, from the Democrats and from the Republicans, you heard uh none of it matters if Trump wants him, he's good. | |
| And I don't think that's healthy for the country, you know. | |
| I think that we should be starting to see Well why why would why would you ever, having done this for as long as we both have done this, why would you s expect anything other than what unf was unfolding yesterday? | |
| I like I would have liked to have heard about how we would invest in the technology, maybe using artificial intelligence uh to assist us in in really creating an iron dome to protect the entire country, considering the level of sophistication of the weaponry that is already out there in the world. | |
| Um they didn't bring any of that up. | |
| No, and that's why Trump and people have forgotten this form the Space Force. | |
| So you remember before he left in his first term, he uh allotted money to the defense department for the Space Force. | |
| That disappeared. | |
| Okay, nobody even remembers that. | |
| But that was designed to do just what you said. | |
| Now, does Pete Hague Seth know that? | |
| I don't know. | |
| What I'm trying to do I do. | |
| I I I I can tell you because I've had long conversations with him, and the main focus of our conversations has been the gap of vulnerability that as I mentioned, the next generation of warfare. | |
| Uh we have talked about DEI and our recruitment levels are way down. | |
| Those have been the main topics of discussion. | |
| And he also has other people behind him, people that that that most people don't know have been appointed. | |
| I believe the number two you probably know him, Steve Feinberg, who ran multi multi-billionaire. | |
| He ran a company, Cerberus. | |
| He's a b he's a blue-collar billionaire. | |
| He drives like an old pickup truck. | |
| And I've known him for many, many years, and he was on the civilian intelligence board, and that's top security clearance. | |
| And if you want somebody involved in advanced technology in the military and procurement, that's your guy. | |
| Well, it's good to hear. | |
| But I didn't know any of that, and the American people didn't know any of that, and we didn't get any of that from the Senate. | |
| So the main arch of this discussion for me is the Senate is now tribal. | |
| And they're not caring about you know, presenting evidence to the American people, good and bad. | |
| Now, I I don't think uh RFK Jr. is going to be confirmed. | |
| So the others will be. | |
| I think Hague Seth will make it by one vote. | |
| Um I'll I'll take your bet. | |
| All right, on RFK, you're taking my bet. | |
| Well, take the bet. | |
| How much you want to bet? | |
| Well, we'll build a lavish dinner down in Palm Beach. | |
| A lavish dinner down in Palm Beach. | |
| Bill, uh I I eat almost every meal at home. | |
| I cook my own food. | |
| But I'll make you anything that you want, your favorite meal, and I will cook it to perfection thanks to Chef IQ sense, which I need to give you one. | |
| All right. | |
| I need I want uh blackened scallops, uh, scallop potatoes, and green. | |
| Okay. | |
| Done. | |
| That's it. | |
| Yeah. | |
| If I win now, if I lose a bet, I can't cook anything but microwave popcorn. | |
| So you can I'll cook I'll I'll cook either way. | |
| How's that? | |
| Yeah, that's all I can do. | |
| But anyway, wait a minute. | |
| I can't make you like my Hannity pork ribs. | |
| I can't make you like a a delicious ribeye bone-in tomahawk steak. | |
| I can't make you, you know, something that would that would if you like fish, you know, the best salmon you've ever had in your life. | |
| Well, you can make it if you want to, and I'll I'll if it's free, I'm gonna eat it. | |
| That's my if it's free, I'll eat it. | |
| All right, I'm not uh, you know, wetted in. | |
| All right, quick break more with Simple Man Bill O'Reilly, all things O'Reilly of Bill O'Reilly.com as we continue. | |
| Hey there. | |
| I'm Mary Catherine Hamm. | |
| And I'm Carol Markowitz. | |
| We've been in political media for a long time. | |
| Long enough to know that it's gotten, well, a little insane. | |
| That's why we started normally a podcast for people who are over the hysteria and just want clarity. | |
| We talk about the issues that actually matter to the country without panic, without yelling, and with a healthy dose of humor. | |
| We don't take ourselves too seriously, but we do take the truth seriously. | |
| So if you're into common sense, sanity, and some occasional sass. | |
| You're our kind of people. | |
| Catch new episodes of Normally every Tuesday and Thursday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. | |
| All right, we continue now with All Things Simple Man. | |
| That's all things Bill O'Reilly, all things O'Reilly of Bill O'Reilly.com. | |
| Do you think RFK Jr. is going to get confirmed? | |
| I do believe in the end he's going to be confirmed because I've had conversations. | |
| Everything that you probably have read about him has been mischaracterized. | |
| Now, for example, his boss eats McDonald's, KFC, and and pizza on a regular basis, right? | |
| He's not going to ban any of those things. | |
| He's not going to ban soft drinks. | |
| He's not going to ban vaccines. | |
| He's not going to uh take a different position than the president on the president's stated position on abortion. | |
| And all of that will come out in the hearings. | |
| What he will do will he will produce non-farmer, meaning the the pharmaceutical industry, uh scientific information to help inform the American people on what is healthy and not healthy. | |
| Certain things will get banned, like you know, red dye number three and things that are known to cause cancer, but short of that, he's gonna give people the choice to decide for themselves. | |
| If you want to get a a quarter pounder of cheese, fries and a coke every day, Bill, go at it. | |
| Have at it. | |
| Here's the problem. | |
| He has said so many things that are off the wall in his past that that's all you're gonna hear about in in the and the de and the Republicans are gonna be on the defensive there. | |
| And I I know for a fact that some Republican senators simply don't trust him. | |
| Um so I don't think he's gonna get through, but I'm looking forward to the dinner, and I you know me, I'm good for it if I lose. | |
| I actually think Tulsi's gonna have a harder time than RFK Jr. | |
| But I think she'll get through too. | |
| Because Tulsi Gabbard is entitled to her opinion. | |
| And if she comes into the hearings and say, look, I've changed my opinion, and here's why. | |
| I think she'll sail through. | |
| Pam Bonnie did very well today. | |
| I I can hardly watch it because of the partisanship, but she was very relaxed and presented himself very well. | |
| Captain is very talented in that area. | |
| She knows how to do it. | |
| She was amazing. | |
| I listen, I want you to stay on the line with for just for my this this ad I'm gonna do, because I'm gonna get you this as a present. | |
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| Now, you say you only can cook microwave popcorn. | |
| I'm gonna I'm gonna make it so even Bill O'Reilly can cook the perfect burger, steak, pork chops, ribs, fish. | |
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| Oh, that's great. | |
| Do I have to wear a little chef's hat though when I get it? | |
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| ChefIQ.com today. | |
| Working every day to remember the forgotten man. | |
| This is the Sean Hannity show. | |
| Um, you know, I I I still cannot get over the catastrophe, the unmitigated disaster that has been Los Angeles. | |
| We still have uh a good percentage of these fires that are not contained even at this late date. | |
| I mean, it's hard to it's it's hard to wrap your mind around, isn't it? | |
| And I was looking at the coverage of of what's going on out there today, and I'm like, I just I cannot believe that the reservoir at the Santa Inez reservoir in the Pacific Palisades was empty. | |
| And nobody seemed to care. | |
| I can't believe that they have fire hydrants that didn't have water in them and didn't work, and and the answer, well, they're not designed for wildfires. | |
| What are they designed for? | |
| And what is your plan for wildfires? | |
| I can't believe that that Was the situation? | |
| I can't believe that a lot of the science of forestry was not used to protect a little shrub as we learned yesterday and gave you great specificity and detail, something I'd never heard of. | |
| You know, only 17% of the Palace Pacific Palisades fire week after broke out, only 17% of it is contained. | |
| You know, we're looking at more than 40,000 acres of Southern California have been a ablaze now in recent weeks. | |
| And yeah, and now we still have more days of Santa Ana winds. | |
| All of this is predictable. | |
| All of this is preventable. | |
| And, you know, out in Los Angeles, residents they're furious, but you want to bet any amount of money that they probably would re-elect Haran Bass and Gavin Newsom tomorrow, and they'll probably elect Kamala Harris after Gavin Newsom leaves office at the end of his second term. | |
| Uh, because I think the bet would be, you know, a pretty darn good bet. | |
| And then it even gets worse out there because now we have issues involving looting with these, you know, these people are taking advantage and and they're going out there, you know, targeting abandoned homes. | |
| And you've got another problem of of price gouging. | |
| People are are, for example, they're jacking up the prices of water and bare necessities. | |
| That that can't happen. | |
| There's a very big distinction. | |
| Nobody has to live in Los Angeles in the proximity near where the fires were in the homes that survived. | |
| Nobody that does that does not need to happen. | |
| People can move further out and get different places, in my view. | |
| Um Milton Stumpus uh is a premier network. | |
| iHeartRadio is our parent company of of the premier radio network. | |
| Uh he is a salesperson. | |
| He is one of the people. | |
| You know, the the 14,000, 15,000 people that lost the structure, most of them homes. | |
| Uh anyway, Milton, I'm so sorry. | |
| Uh my heart goes out to you and your family and your friends and your neighbors and everybody that is suffering out there, and I would argue suffering needlessly. | |
| I think this could have all been prevented. | |
| Yeah, Sean, I I appreciate it. | |
| My wife here is with me, Julie, and and uh we have just been, you know, our hearts are full with all the love and support and prayers, and and it really is, you know, helped keep us strong. | |
| So I thank you very much for that. | |
| Well, I I mean, it really is amazing to me. | |
| I mean, when you when you discovered, when did you first hear that these the reservoir was empty? | |
| When did you first discover that fire hydrants didn't work? | |
| You know, what did you make of you know the fact when you learn that out in California they're spending an absolute fortune on electric uh what do you call them uh street sweepers? | |
| Yeah, and over a hundred billion dollars on electric vehicles in the state, and they cut 101 million from the state firefighting budget. | |
| They don't practice the science of forestry, they don't do the controlled burns, they don't they don't clear out the brush, the kindling for these fires. | |
| I mean, as you've learned more since all of this occurred and and you lost every possession you ever had in that house, and and now you've got you know, your your life upended in ways that most people can't imagine. | |
| When you learn all of that, I would think I'd be pretty angry. | |
| Right. | |
| Are you guys angry? | |
| Because I'd be pretty angry. | |
| We're we're furious, Sean. | |
| You know, we we're responsible. | |
| We've we've lived in this neighborhood twenty-three years, and just to give you some perspective of where we live, we're we're on a a street, a very small street on the top of the Temiskal uh Canyon Gateway Park, a street called Rimmer. | |
| And we had direct line of sight to not only where the fire originated, but over the twenty-three years we've lived there, we've seen tons of fires like this. | |
| And almost in every case, you know, the the air assets are right on it. | |
| There's trucks all over the place. | |
| This, that, and the other thing. | |
| Um, yeah, we have a fire hydrant forever house. | |
| Every every single year, uh, we religiously, and and we we have to is we clear the hillside, we fin out the yuk, we dead brush all the you know, any other trees in and around the area, and on top of that, you know, on top of the property taxes, which should go to support the fire department police, of course, and keeping us safe and keeping our property safe, we have assessments for open spaces which is sold as fire clearance and abatement and you know park maintenance and this that and the other. | |
| I will tell you that there this area behind our house, this this uh Santa Monica Nature Conservancy was a freaking tinder box. | |
| And we saw the fire, I started documenting it at around 10 37 A.M. Um the first air asset I saw was around twelve thirty. | |
| Um Palisades Highland I mean sa I saw all these neighborhoods burn. | |
| I saw the Palisades Highland burn. | |
| I saw I saw the um uh Mel Medio area right across Tamascal Canyon from us burning. | |
| I did not see a single truck a single firefighter um the entire day until we got off our hill and I did see I did see a couple of DWP trucks though and they they control both our water and power. | |
| They were not looking overhead at our overhead lines they were all stationed in and around water uh shutoff valve areas and and so all of all of this is just maddening after you know hearing about no water in the you know no water available to the to the fire department and that's I guess one of the reasons why they didn't deploy. | |
| I mean we we thought we thought for sure we would have a fighting chance with the truck on our block and a FOSS check line being drawn or something helping us but we were sitting freaking ducks Sean. | |
| I mean it really is is remarkable and and when did you finally make the decision you had to get out we you know luckily my wife and I took cert training because basically the fire department that teaches us this basically said you know what you guys are probably with the major event and we're thinking earthquake right um we're gonna be alone and we're gonna have to fend for ourselves. | |
| So we we all all of our neighbors on the street got together and made sure that everybody was able to get out of there with their lives and my wife and I were one of the last to leave our street with with with an older neighbor neighbor um and a police car behind us at about just a little under four PM my wife and I tried to get back into the neighborhood at five PM and that was our last attempt because at that point our entire neighborhood was engulfed in flames. | |
| Alright quick break we'll come back one of the victims of the Pacific Palisades fires happens to work with our company uh iHeart Media and Premier Radio Networks Milton Stumpus he lost everything as we continue Sean Hannity Show a place where free speech and the first amendment are still alive and well liberalism is a failed ideology. | |
| Get your dose of independence and liberty every weekday right here with Sean. | |
| Sean Hannity. | |
| More with Milton Stumpus. | |
| He works with us at iHeart and Premier Radio Networks. | |
| And he was one of the victims, his entire home burned to the ground in the Pacific Palisades. | |
| As we discussed the real impact on real people and, of course, the failure of government on every level. | |
| Do you know where you lived in Pacific Palisades in 2019? | |
| The L.A. Department of Water and Power began replacing nearly 100-year-old power lines cutting through Topanga State Park when the project was stopped within days of starting by environmentalists. | |
| They were outraged that the federally endangered Broughton's milk-veached plants had been trampled on. | |
| on during the the process the whole purpose of the project was to improve fire safety for the Pacific Palisades area by replacing wooden poles with steel uh widening fire access lanes in in the area installing wind and fire resistant power lines all after the area was identified as having an elevated fire risk. | |
| This project will help ensure power reliability and safety and help reduce wildfire threats they said at the time it was stopped within days because of radical environmentalists. | |
| Now do you even know what a Bronton milk veg is it looks to me like a weed I John I don't and I I wonder how they're doing at this time in in my neighborhood, right? | |
| Because there's I I don't see a single thing that's living. | |
| Well, the governor cut and slashed a hundred and one million dollars uh in June from the the firefighting effort budget that they that you guys have out there. | |
| The the mayor cut it by just millions of dollars prior to this, but they had six hundred and fifty million state and federal dollars to make LA port, the LA port green. | |
| Uh they have over a billion dollars that they put aside, which kind of shocked me uh for electric vehicles on a state level, and in LA you're paying for these green energy sweepers that uh a street sweepers rather than cost eight hundred grand a piece. | |
| Did you know any of that? | |
| You know what I I have because we followed that, but it's I thank you for bringing that up. | |
| So this I think this thing, what we've gone through in the Palisades is gonna be unprecedented in the in the uh regard as the toxins are so unbelievable because there were so many EVs there, uh those EV charging stations, solar panels, and basically it's with all the lithium ion um that has been burning like crazy. | |
| I remember the I-15 was closed for like almost a month when one truck with EV with uh batteries spilled over and it took them like a month to put the fire out. | |
| This entire neighborhood, Sean, is is covered with lithium ions that have been burning. | |
| The ground is probably gonna be having to be, you know, managed by some kind of super fund site because it is extremely toxic right now. | |
| What are your plans? | |
| I mean, uh obviously it's uh now Gavin did say that he would try to expedite the building process, the rebuilding process for people, but I don't know uh uh uh there's an insurance problem out there. | |
| What are your plans? | |
| Are you gonna stay in California? | |
| Are you gonna sell off your lot? | |
| Are you gonna rebuild and and how long is that gonna take? | |
| What are your plans? | |
| Our our Rimmer neighbors that you know work together to get everybody out alive. | |
| We all kind of have formed a text thread and we're communicating and so far everybody appears to to want to, and we included, is rebuild. | |
| And here's my thought on that, because you you've got the twenty-eight Olympics coming to Los Angeles. | |
| They do not want to lose the Olympics. | |
| You've got Rick Caruso who, you know, with his own money saved his own village because you know, he brought in his own water water trucks, tanker trucks, and and he had a private fire department. | |
| And with all the other people that are literally the movers and shakers of Los Angeles, many in California and and you know, this country that have lost their homes, their kids have lost their homes and schools, etcetera. | |
| I think that there's gonna be an all hands on deck rebuild effort to get this thing up and running. | |
| And you know what? | |
| We're I would like to be a part of you know, rebuilding a neighborhood that's very important to Los Angeles, it's amazing to Los Angeles, that it doesn't necessarily have million doll million and billionaires. | |
| Can I can I ask you an honest question? | |
| Why would you bother to stay out there? | |
| You pay the highest taxes in the entire country. | |
| And this is the type of service you get, and this is now the the biggest project you're gonna take on in your adult life. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Why? | |
| I I mean th these are the reasons I got out of New York. | |
| Right. | |
| And I've been gone for a full year and I'm now in my second year full time in Florida. | |
| I I left. | |
| I sold everything, handed my gun license back, I deregistered to vote. | |
| You know, I I I just disconnected, but you're gonna st sounds like you're gonna stay. | |
| Well, if you know what I'm cautiously optimistic. | |
| If if this does not change policy with forest management, with water management, including, you know, the reservoirs and up blowing up dams and and all of those things and staffing protective services that will keep citizens alive and the property safe. | |
| If that doesn't happen, then you know, like you, uh we just may tap out, you know, because it it won't be worth it. | |
| Uh I'm sorry you have to go through all of any of it, and I'm sorry for your neighbors, and I'm sorry for sorry for every victim here, and I mean that with all my heart. | |
| And I wish you the best, and I'm sure you'll make the right decision for you. | |
| I appreciate it. |