Tony Kinnett of The Daily Signal has been reporting from Maui, where a devastating fire has officially claimed the lives of 116, but local estimates put the number of lives lost at over 1000. Tony shares what he’s seen in and around Lahaina, what those affected need from the rest of the country, and what next steps are necessary to hold people accountable for unforgivable mistakes that may have cost lives.
TRANSCRIPT
Inez Stepman:
Welcome to High Noon, where we talk about controversial subjects with interesting people. Today’s subject is, I don’t know if so much controversial, although unfortunately, it’s starting to become politicized and controversial, but every so often, there’s something that needs to be talked about that the media is just doing such an appalling job on the whole doing that I feel like even my non-reporter skills, to whatever extent I have a platform, I want to lend it to talk about that subject, and that subject is the fires in Maui, in Lahaina. Tony Kinnett is my guest this week. He’s been in Hawaii for the last several days, reporting from the ground for The Daily Signal. Tony, thank you so much for taking time out of what must be a very busy several days to talk to me.
Tony Kinnett:
The only thing that’s going on right now is President Biden doing photo ops, so this is beyond far more important.
Inez Stepman:
We’ll get to Biden in a minute and his various, let’s say, response or lack of response to this tragedy, but let’s just start with the obvious question, what have you seen in the last few days? Obviously, this is a community that’s devastated. We have 110, I believe, or 114 as the official death toll. It seems like, unfortunately, that number is likely to climb because there’s still hundreds of people missing. What are you seeing?
Tony Kinnett:
Well, first of all, to address the death toll rumor, it’s actually closer to 1,000, and the question is not whether the death toll is closer to or over 1,000, but how many of that 1,000 are school-aged children? We’ve spoken with several individuals from around the island, it’s a very small, close-knit community, especially on the western side of the island, which is a small part in and of itself, and there are rumors of hundreds of body bags that FEMA and other authorities have collected. We have not yet heard anything back from any press release officer. To say that this is a very closed off operation would be an understatement of the century. I have never seen any kind of a disaster situation in which there is no one that has basically been set aside to talk to media, even people who that’s their job.
That’s the first thing that should be noted, is it’s probably in the end going to be, I would estimate, somewhere north of 1,000 and I would… Horrifically, from what we are being told, it might be anywhere upwards of 500 children that died in these wildfires because they were sent home from school, which I don’t have words for that. I just don’t. The second biggest thing that people need to know about this is that all of the national reporting on this, from the left and from the right, is completely and utterly false. It’s completely and utterly false. I’ve watched Fox News reporters, I’ve watched CNN reporters make absolute asses of themselves walking on… I’ve seen a photo of a Fox News reporter who was walking on land that had not yet been cleared by cadaver dogs.
I saw reports of CNN reporters that were apparently chided for trespassing and possibly also walking on unmarked graves, all to report basically these small snippet sound bites that are, “Things are bad here, insert political frame.” Inserting a political frame, every reporter is biased, that’s very common, but they’re not reporting what the biggest concerns of the islanders here on Maui have, which are, number one, the vast majority of the island that is not Lahaina that is going to starve and is going to be completely economically destitute because at the onset of this tragedy, celebrities like Jason Momoa and Governor Josh Green got in front of the camera and got in front of the press and said, “If you have a trip booked here, to Maui, you need to cancel it immediately.”
We were talking with a lady who runs tours said that she had to give $40,000 back to various companies because people were calling in and canceling tours that they had scheduled later this year, tours that were nowhere near Lahaina, and none of that money is coming into Maui anymore. They made a very excellent point, and we can talk about this a little bit later, which is when the feds leave and the nonprofits leave, who’s going to be putting money into rebuilding Lahaina? It’s going to be the rest of Maui, not even all of Hawaii. If the celebrities and the influencers get their kicks telling everyone, “Well, the Islanders don’t want you here,” and that’s what we were told. We were expecting that. Tim Kennedy is my videographer and editor, and he and I landed and we were expecting this rude, callous group of people who just wanted us to leave. I have never been more pleasantly surprised.
As a Hoosier, from Indiana, we have what’s called Hoosier hospitality that we pride ourselves in, and what attitude has been shown from the people of Maui, not just to the people of Lahaina, which is, I’ve never seen self-sacrifice to this degree, people have emptied tens of thousands of dollars out of their own bank accounts with no expectation of any return to help people of Lahaina, but even to visitors from the outside, the aloha spirit, it’s not a joke, it’s not a meme. It is genuine and real, and it puts what I consider Hoosier hospitality to shame. That’s the biggest change that I wish that the entire nation knew about is what the Islanders actually cared about, which is nothing that’s being reported.
Inez Stepman:
You said there are other things that you’ve been hearing that you just are not hearing or actively hearing in the media just contradicted. What are some of the other things, what’s actually necessary and what is the message that the folks in Lahaina and around on Maui actually want to send out to their fellow Americans who are extremely concerned about this?
Tony Kinnett:
Well, to set the table, first of all, I would like to correct the record that Josh Green got up just a few minutes ago here, and right now, it is 8:07 PM Monday your time, but here, it’s a little after 2:00, and Josh Green just got up in front of the nation and said that Biden had responded in six hours, and that is grossly incorrect. I have spoken to individuals who were in charge of volunteer boat fleets, almost like getting the men out of Dunkirk, that were funneling supplies from other Hawaiian islands to one boat ramp north of Lahaina, and there was no… They can see Pearl Harbor from some points on this island, they can see the island that houses the US Pacific Fleet, and there was nothing. It was radio silence for four days, so we need to correct the record.
People of the island are very proud of that, and they should be, because for that four days, it was Hawaiians helping Hawaiians and it was nonprofit groups from the mainland and other places like Canada coming to do what it is that they could, and so for Josh Green and for Biden to get up and grandstand about FEMA is ridiculous. Number two, it needs to be made very clear that these people who lost their homes have been sleeping on the floors and cars of neighbors and friends and strangers who are also just in Maui who are just helping people out, while the Biden administration, we’re investigating this at the moment, has likely been putting up federal officials from FEMA in these extremely expensive, $1,000 a night hotels that are not being used to house people who just lost everything. Individuals are being denied FEMA coverage if they have an ounce of home insurance.
But the biggest thing that I think people from Maui have asked us to share with the world is that they desperately desire you to ignore Jason Momoa, ignore Governor Josh Green and whatever he’s flip-flopped on today for his principle on tourism, and if you have an interest in going on any kind of a vacation, you should consider Maui. Flights are not expensive right now. People desperately do need you to come if you have any interest. Actually, I’m in the process of scheduling a second honeymoon here with my wife, and that’s because I do believe that people really do want to rebuild, and in order to do that, the island needs to stay functioning.
Inez Stepman:
You’ve been talking to people for the last several days. What are some of the things they’ve told you, aside from, you’ve admirably laid out what they want, the direction, to the rest of us, but what are some of the stories that you’ve heard from people who have seen this unfold either in the next town over, who have friends and family, or who themselves have gone through? We’ll get to a third subject in a minute, but the more that I read about this, not in terms of the underlying disaster, but in the series of both ideological and screw-ups, both ideological and just pure competence that potentially resulted in loss of life here is like Chornobyl-level, the number of just things that have happened, and this is from The Wall Street Journal reporting, which is basically-
Tony Kinnett:
They’ve been great. I met a Wall Street Journal individual while we were here and they were fantastic. Very thorough, stellar reporting from The Wall Street Journal team.
Inez Stepman:
What did people tell you in terms of just individual stories? What are some of the things that you’ve heard from this disaster?
Tony Kinnett:
The absolute incompetence from local officials is on a level that we haven’t seen since the police officers in Uvalde, and I mean every single word of that. The absolute horror of officers who were stopping people from leaving Lahaina in long lines of traffic, lines of vehicles that burnt where they stood because officers were blocking the road. I was just talking not two hours ago to a lady who we met who lost her voice from smoke inhalation that was giving me a detailed account of how she had to exit this line of vehicles, snake through parking lots in order to escape Lahaina as it was burning down. The wind was pushing the fire so fast that it was moving miles, genuine miles, hundreds and thousands of acres, in minutes. People don’t understand. You think fire, you can see it slowly coming down the mountain. That’s not what this is like at all.
These were gale force winds that were streaming down the mountain like a pack of race horses that were driving these fires at rapid speeds. You had people that were abandoning their own houses which were burning down, in order to dig trenches and to make pseudo breakwater devices to save other people’s houses, so while their houses were burning down, they were busy saving other people’s houses. People have sold their vehicles in order to donate things to the victims of Lahaina. We talked to individuals who said that the cell phone network was down and there was no way they could have received any warning. We talked to individuals who said the cell phone network was up, yet there was no emergency alert system warning that was issued.
The reason that matters is since 2012, the EAS system, that stands for the Emergency Alert System, was upgraded in this country so that if there is an EAS alert sent out, it goes to your phone. I’m sure we’ve all been woken up at 2:00 in the morning for an Amber Alert or a thunderstorm warning or what have you, and it gives you the alert type, and then below it, a very detailed illustration and explanation of where the problem is, when the alert was issued, and what actions are recommended. People in Maui received none of that. Fire hydrants were cut off. People had no water. There was a major landowner on the west side of Maui who wanted to give water immediately to volunteer crews, and yet the county officials said they had to consult the equity farming initiative in order to allow him to distribute water. There was a fire station that was planned back in 2018 on land that was donated that had the unending zoning bureaucracy, that kind of regulatory nonsense that kept the volunteer fire station from being built.
When I tell Shoshana Weissmann about this, she’s going to go ballistic with the kind of red tape that’s going on here. The stories upon stories of self-sacrifice, of people not knowing where individuals are and terrifyingly running halfway across the island to see if someone was at maybe a second shop location instead of another one and crying in each other’s arms. Perhaps the most damning story of all that we have confirmed because he bragged about it, is the former director of disaster response on this island was the chief of staff for the mayor for seven years and was given that position crony-style. He was completely unqualified for it. He defended in a public press conference that he did not sound the storm warning sirens around Hawaii, which, by the way, are touted as the most advanced in the world. He chose not to sound those, and by the way, they’re not heavily dependent on the electrical grid.
They’re set up in a way that they’re basically self-provisional in power. A lot of them have solar panels on top, thermal-shielded lithium ion batteries inside, so that they can sound for a long time without any power source at all, and all they need is a very weak signal to activate. He chose not to sound those because he thought, and he said this openly, that the people of Maui were so stupid that they would believe it was a tsunami coming in and that they would run towards the fire. Every person that I’ve talked to has been so gravely insulted by that. You can see this massive wall of black acrid smoke mixed with ash and asbestos and lead paint from these ancient buildings sweeping over the land, like something out of a scene from the movie 2012 or The Day After Tomorrow.
It was incredible. I’ve seen photos, a guy drove his motorcycle around just taking photos in the middle of this, and he lost his house, by the way, since then, as well. The director of MEMA, the Maui Emergency Management Agency, chose not to turn on those sirens because he thought that people would run into the fire. By the way, this matters because this was 3:00 PM local. They had kids at home from school, parents were at work, and the only evacuation some people were given were a hand banging on the door hoping someone would answer it to say, “You have 15 minutes to get out of here.” Often, it ended up being only seven or eight minutes. It is an unparalleled amount of trauma that these people have gone through, and the incompetence from local officials, who were given these cushy jobs as what looked to be favors, is nothing short of not a national scandal, but a humanitarian scandal on a global level.
Inez Stepman:
It seems like that story of incompetence is replicated in multiple places. I’m reading now from The Wall Street Journal reporting, according to a letter from West Maui Land executive, Glenn Tremble, the company, and this is the company that controls the water diversion in the island, the company had to wait five hours while the fire was spreading to get approval, in part because the commission asked whether the company had received assurance from a downstream user that his lohi, I guess is how you pronounce it, used for traditional vegetable cultivation and other uses, would not be impacted by a reduction in available water.
Tony Kinnett:
I don’t know if you know this, Inez, but it’s really hard to maintain your crops if the farm’s burned down. I don’t know, it’s a shocking agriculture principle.
Inez Stepman:
I don’t think the lohi cultivation practices thrive in a towering inferno. But this guy continued in the letter, but by then we were unable… They got it back only five hours later while this fire was burning. By that time, they were unable to reach the siphon release to make the adjustments that would have allowed more water to fill the reservoirs. We watched as the devastation unfold around us without the ability to help. We anxiously awaited the morning knowing we could have made more water available to Maui Fire Department if our costs had been immediately approved.
That’s just one piece of this unfolding story of what does look like cushy appointments, somebody’s cousin, somebody’s brother, whatever, and then mixed with, and here, I do have to insert some frame, which I’ve been avoiding, talking about politics, but this sort of bureaucratic, sclerotic state that has as its highest goal all of these sort of green initiatives or whatever and is unable to think outside of the box, even in something so obvious as to say, “Yes, of course, you should divert water to the towering wall of fire to fight that fire that’s coming down towards a town where there are potentially thousands of people. Forget about everything else.” This inability to think outside of bureaucratic procedure here, I honestly don’t have words for this. This is the sort of thing that people should go to jail for.
Tony Kinnett:
It is. It absolutely is, and to jail for a very long time. The level of incompetence mixed with this kind of woke nonsense when it comes to these red tape bureaucratic equity checks in the middle of an absolute disaster is the abject failure of a weak society exerting its foolish influence over those whose lives are paying for those mistakes. To be clear, this also goes to the national level, because we’re talking to an individual who was coordinating the northern boat movement efforts and relief for supplies and evacuation while the federal government was sitting with its hands in its pockets. He told us after, of course, lambasting the Biden administration for diverting $40 billion in call for Ukraine, while Hawaii is getting $700 per household, if you have a Lahaina address.
He also made a very interesting point in talking about being able to see the island housing Pearl Harbor from their island. The question is, and I happen to know this based on not only a lot of documentaries, but also individuals I know who are stationed on the Hawaiian Islands, that there are several military fire boat equipment series and crews that are constantly stationed on these islands. Where were they? The fire swept down Lahaina into the sea, boats burned in the harbor. The US Navy has fireboats out here, where were they? This is the 21st century. We have instantaneous communication. You are in New York, I am in Maui, we are communicating instantaneously. You’re telling me that one of Biden’s chiefs of staff could not have ordered that a few fireboats be sent over so that boats didn’t burn in the harbor? The fire was leaping across four-lane highways, and it’s the only main highway that goes through the southern portion of Maui.
The northern road from Lahaina through the northern stretch of the island is this rickety, one-lane road on cliff-side. The infrastructure of this island is absolutely abysmal, despite the billions of dollars that this state taxes from its citizens and then uses apparently for nothing at all. The infrastructure from the Hawaiian forestry management sections is horrible. The land reclamation from the sugar plantations left dry, fallow, tall grasses and weeds fields that were basically super kindling. Super kindling is, by the way, a scientific term that we use to describe wildfires that occasionally hit the savanna that accelerate both the temperature and the speed of wildfires. It’s mistake after mistake after mistake in this horrific house of cards that someone else was going to have to cash in chips to pay. It looks like in this situation, it was paid for with the lives of possibly hundreds of children whose… How do you even begin to address a situation like this?
Inez Stepman:
There really aren’t any words to talk about it. It seems like every time I get any kind of actual information about this that’s concrete, it’s another layer of completely inexcusable. People, I assume, have dispensed a long time ago with the idea that our government is full of very smart and competent people, but this is basic compassion and common sense not being followed with the most horrific results possible. I want to ask you about the media coverage. You hinted at it before, but I… Look, again, obviously, I have a negative view of the legacy media and I’m not super surprised that, for example, the initial headlines on this are all about climate change. It’s sort of par for the course. They seem like they’re waiting for the Biden administration to give whatever frame they want to on this before they follow along like the propagandists that they are.
But what did manage to shock me is there’s no serious reporting. It’s you, The Daily Signal, and The Wall Street Journal, and that’s basically it. The New York Times has interviewed a couple people, but they don’t seem to have, at least I haven’t seen, any major reporting coming out of The New York Times to the extent that they have anything. They have this one ridiculous article about exactly that water shutoff issue, and they frame it as this, “Oh, there’s a lot of history about water rights in Hawaii,” as though any of that matters when you have a fire that’s rushing towards, like you’re saying, children in their houses, as though it’s some kind of understandable, bureaucratic, historical dispute between agencies. It’s just ridiculous. I guess first, on the positive side, who else is doing any serious reporting, and then what are residents saying about the fact that there doesn’t seem to be… Are they looking at the reporting or what they see on cable news or whatever? What are they saying about how the media is covering this?
Tony Kinnett:
The other serious media agencies, and Tim is over on the other side of the screen, he’s currently editing, hey, Tim, just to check if there’s any that I’m missing, let me know, so there’s other serious agencies, news crews that we’ve met. There was a Japanese crew from mainland Japan who was doing a really phenomenal job of covering, which is an embarrassment because imagine another country covering your state better than you’re covering your state. Wall Street Journal was doing a very good job. Is there anyone else that we saw that was – ABC was very kind to us, but I haven’t seen any of the reports since they’ve been here, which is… I was the one who wrote the article criticizing their inclusion of climate change, but at least the crew that was here was very nice and respectful. Every news crew that we have spoken to on the island has had nothing but disgusting things to say about CNN’s crews, who basically came in like water buffalo in a China shop. Basically, there’s a story going around about an individual that was carrying a timber in the burnt remains of their house, and apparently, as the story goes, and of course, I’ve not seen this, I don’t know if there’s even a video that exists to corroborate, but a CNN crew basically marched up to this person carrying the timber and started hitting them with all of these questions.
It’s barely a day after the fires had stopped, the guy was wearing work gloves with thermal shielding so he didn’t burn his hands on the embers and the metal that’s still hot on where his house was, and this is before the National Guard came in and started fencing off these areas, but the CNN crew just apparently blustered on in and started asking questions, didn’t pick up the ember. Several times, Tim and I have stopped what we were doing to carry boxes of food, to carry boxes of formula. Sometimes the camera has to be put down and you have to get to work. That’s common decency, like you said earlier. There’s just basic human understandings that we’re supposed to have in how to carry ourselves in these situations. From what I’ve seen from some of the crews here is just they’re coming here to be basically corporate influencers, to get their sound bites and leave and it has made the islanders…
I’m nervous to tell people that I’m with the media, because immediately it’s like bile comes into their mouths and I have to rush to explain, “No, no, no, I’m not with CNN,” and I include Fox. I’ve had a good relationship with Fox, but the crew here has not done a good job. They have apparently, from what people have told me, they’ve not been respectful and I have made it very clear to tell the people that are on Maui, “I am here to not get sound bites. We’re not trying to cut up what you’re saying. Your full statement will be delivered, and I don’t care if it’s wildly from the left or wildly from the right or you’re from the Hawaiian Autonomy and Independence Movement or you’re a Teddy Roosevelt Republican or an Ayn Rand Libertarian, I don’t care. We need to tell your story how you want it to be told, because no one else is doing it,” and they’re flocking to us. My phone is ringing off the hook because we have people that are speaking to us who are refusing to speak to other media.
I want to be clear, I am nothing special. I’m a former science teacher from Indiana who hopped into journalism because I was fired from a public school after exposing critical race theory in the district. I am not a journalism major. I am constantly second guessing what I am doing. The only reason that any of the footage from here looks good is because I have a phenomenal editor who knows what he is doing and who is a brilliant videographer, but that’s how low the bar is, that someone as inexperienced and as fumbling as I am, can talk to people and want to be talked to, people that are on the left and on the right, and there’s very little political action here, other than that I think I have found exactly one person who was excited that Biden was coming. I finally found her this morning, some old lady in the sauna was excited to see Air Force One fly over the beach.
Everyone else universally despised Biden. No one’s covering it. It wasn’t until this morning, Tim and I were out going to pick up a few things, and we passed a house with American flags turned upside down signaling the stress and a sign out front that said, “Traitor Joe Biden, go home,” or, “Traitor Joe, go home,” and it really fit a lot of what we were hearing. The only video I’ve seen since then is that the RNC research account on Twitter had a video of people lining the street where I guess the motorcade was expected, basically saying things like, “Biden is not enough,” and other kind of comments. Again, who’s reporting that? I’m sure Fox will run that later this evening, and we’re churning out articles and videos as fast as we can, but we’re more interested in quality over quantity because I don’t want to be accused of being what apparently the rest of the media has purported themselves to be.
Good on The Wall Street Journal. We ran into one of their people once, I guess I have heard maybe there was someone from The Daily Wire here. I haven’t heard anything back. The communication between any group and another group on this island is… You might as well be sending messages via Morse code. It’s incredibly slow, and it’s just wild to see. Those are the things that we’ve heard about. I would say there’s something else important to note at the end of this question here, and please forgive me for rambling, so many people haven’t watched media at all here. So many people have not opened their phones and turned on media in the last 12 days, 13 days, since the fires began. When I’ve asked them some questions, some questions that I was sent here to ask, they said, “I don’t know. I haven’t opened up my phone. I’ve been too busy with what’s going on.” How damning for a lot of the national media publications to, while people here are not paying attention, to paint a drastically different picture than what’s going on.
It’s one thing to find someone who’s going to say what you want them to say, but it’s another thing entirely to take people who are grieving, videotape them mourning the loss of their children, and then paint an incredibly disgusting picture that’s going to damage the island for years. Telling people not to come to the island, as Jason Momoa did and other influencers on the beach on bikinis who all they do for a living is broadcast their cleavage telling people not to come to Maui, and then while I and my videographers are standing talking to restaurant owners and servers saying, “That person’s an idiot bimbo. We really, more than anything, we need people to come here.”
Like I told you earlier, I’ve never really wanted to come to Hawaii. I’m a mountains and Great Lakes kind of guy. I grew up in Indiana. I had my honeymoon in Gatlinburg, and it was nice, but I texted my wife two days ago and I said, “Before the year is out, whatever we have to do, we are going to have a second honeymoon here in Maui.” That’s, I think, a much better story the media should be telling. Well, not my second honeymoon kind of a thing, but you know what I mean, that the people of the island desperately want people from the mainland to come here and invest in what’s going on, and everything else is just secondary to them.
Inez Stepman:
There’s no way to rebuild if there’s… It’s the primary industry, is it not, over there? Tourism is pretty much the industry of Maui and the Hawaiian Islands, generally, no?
Tony Kinnett:
There’s a secondary… We had a long conversation about this with a former PhD economics professor from Berkeley and her husband the other evening, and they were giving us a bit of an impromptu history lesson on what happened to the sugar plantation industries. They have recently started these automated citrus farms that are growing here, which is great because the citrus industry in Florida is in trouble with the increasing freezes in the winter, as we know, climate change involves greater deep freezes in Florida, but there’s a greater citrus industry that’s growing. They’re not entirely certain as to how much money that’s going to keep on the island. Because this is an island and trade is more expensive, there really is much more of a discussion on, as far as tourism and other industries that could be built here, what money’s going to stay here as to what’s going to go back and not return.
Tourism is definitely the primary industry. I am not learned enough, and I’m not trying to be politically correct, I’m not learned enough. I really don’t. I don’t know enough about the economy here to make broad, sweeping statements, other than that everything is built on tourism. There was a restaurant owner from a guy who was featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, and it’s called Fat Daddy’s Smokehouse, a wonderful guy we talked to for a little bit. He’s part of Operation Barbecue Rescue and they’ve delivered like thousands of meals over the island. He was telling me how tourism fed the whole island. I thought I knew a lot about tourism because Indianapolis is a tourism-driven city for sports and events and conventions.
He said, “Tourism is so dependent here that my air conditioner repair guy is not going to be paid unless people eat at my restaurant, and that air conditioner guy is not going to be able to pay someone to fix his roof unless someone eats at my restaurant so that I can pay him.” Every single industry on this island is dependent on tourism, so much so that the county and the state government are competing on how much tourism taxes, like lodging taxes, they can put on things to make money off of it. Tourism is the only bone right now, because those citrus groves that were replacing some of the sugar plantations, they’re not grown yet, and even then, no one knows if they’re going to be enough to substantially diversify the economy, so it’s tourism or nothing here.
Inez Stepman:
I guess the next question that I have is now, the military has arrived, you said that Lahaina and some of these other pieces of ground are locked off by the military, when did the military arrive, because I feel like I’ve seen conflicting reports? Not in the first few days, I understand, but when did the military arrive, because that’s another one of those things, I just don’t know what to believe online. I saw somebody saying that the military only arrived in advance of Biden’s caravan-
Tony Kinnett:
That’s not true.
Inez Stepman:
… and the president speaking. When did the military arrive, and is there finally, much too late, some kind of coordination being brought to the, unfortunately, the recovery efforts, it would have to be at this point, mostly recovery efforts, and then to deal with some of these organizational problems that you were mentioning, that people have to talk to each other by Morse code, right?
Tony Kinnett:
Right. I am going to preface all of this by saying this is only what I have seen and what I have asked, and there’s a chance that I could be wrong. The reason that you might say, “Well, you’re a journalist. If you’re reporting, why aren’t you more sure?” We have been given no access to the personnel information or the public resources officers or the PAO, so the spokesperson for National Guards groups, no one is speaking to us, period. We have traveled all over this island to try to find a PIO to speak to. The PIO in the Maui Police Department office near the airport, near OGG, is closed off. They’re only doing interview only, and even those, there’s no response. With all of that said, the National Guard units were well established here before we got here on Thursday and Friday.
They had been there primarily to do one thing and one thing alone. They’re transporting some things in a lot of Osprey helicopter flights and things like that. The National Guard troops on the ground, and I want to make this clear, each and every National Guard troop we have seen since we have been here that has not been in a plane or helicopter of some sort is guarding. They are under Walmart, Great Valu, tailgate tents, and they are basically sitting there making sure people don’t go down streets into condemned areas. That’s it, and they’re assisting in guarding just checkpoints. That’s all they’re doing. They’re restricting anyone who is not National Guard or fed, and they have yellow paint markers that they are riding on rented vehicles either NG for National Guard or Fed.
That comes into play in an investigation that Tim and I are currently working on, and basically, now this gives us the opportunity to see exactly where the Biden administration is housing the National Guard. So far, we’ve seen that they’re shoving the Nation Guard into the much cheaper Westin, and then they’re putting FEMA officials and high brass, and I’m going to get this incredibly wrong in how I pronounce it, like the Grand Wailea or the… Basically, it’s the most fancy hotel on Maui, or the Wailea or something like that, and it’s $1,000 a night. When FEMA officials are not basically doing some mystical something at their command post and the local police working with cadaver dogs and search crews, the only thing I have seen the National Guard doing is guarding checkpoints. I’ve talked to several of them. A couple of them went to Benning like I did.
I talked to a former border patrol officer who also worked with a mercenary group at one point, he and I were in a West Point SLS squad together, and he couldn’t tell me much. When I was talking to a few National Guardsmen at a checkpoint, their sergeant major had come up and basically asked what we were doing, you can’t talk to these guys. Only the PAO, the information officer who’s allowed to talk to me, can do so. I asked, “Well,” and you can see these videos, by the way, we posted these videos online, “Well, where do you want me to go? Just point me in the direction, I will go there. We’re not in the way, we’re not trying to get sound bites, we’re trying to trespass. I want to talk to the people you have set aside to talk. Someone’s job is to be a public relations officer. They’re not waking up and carrying timber anywhere. Their job is to answer media questions. Where are they? We can’t find them.”
By the way, the officers that we did talk to, the National Guardsmen, they are so embarrassed that they’re guarding areas and fencing off areas. They’re not even allowing locals back into their areas. By the way, I don’t know if you saw President Biden strutting through the streets of Lahaina today, but he was strutting through areas that have not been open to the public. If you’re Dr. Jill Biden, you’re allowed to strut through the barely recently cleared streets, where homeowners haven’t even been allowed to dig through for heirlooms. I’m looking off the coast right now, there are rains that might be coming in, so if anything, like perhaps a photo in a glass frame, has survived by some miracle and the rain washes through, it’s going to ruin the photos. I’ve talked to some people who have basically trespassed already and have recovered some photos and some heirlooms that would be destroyed the instant that this humid, hot water and any kind of a rain at any time soon would wash away.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to get off subject, but those are the kinds of things that we’ve seen the National Guard doing, and local police officers, except for one who was just kind of an a-hole and another guy came up and said, “Don’t worry about him, he’s…” Anyway, all of the troops that we’ve seen are embarrassed by the brass, the higher ups who are ordering them to do this. It doesn’t make any sense to them. There’s no communication really between police and the National Guard. We were let by one National Guard post, went up the hill, were turned around by police, told to ask who the National Guardsman was that forwarded us through. We got down and asked them, “Well, we need you to tell us who forwarded us up the hill, because we were given permission,” and then they couldn’t find the guy who sent us up the hill.
It’s a circus. That’s why so many of the people that we’ve talked to who are locals have said, quite clearly, “FEMA, get out of the way. Send the Guard home. Just get out of the way. We’ll do it.” By the way, they have. I’ve never seen people just work together like this. We all talk about everyone pitches in after a natural disaster, not like this. People have spent tens of thousands of their own dollars to donate so people can stay in condominiums and things near where we are, while the federal government is putting FEMA officials and pencil pushers, who are doing nothing during the day from what we’ve been able to ascertain, in these $1,000 a night like Ritz Carlton-esque hotels. Sorry about that, Inez, I didn’t-
Inez Stepman:
No, no, no. It’s so enraging, and it must be even more so when you’re there.
Tony Kinnett:
I spent time in a Sunday service at a Baptist church, Lahaina Baptist, it stood. The pastor called it miraculous, the grass and the trees on that little, tiny spot of land that church is on were untouched, everything in a two-block radius burnt to the ground. There was a Catholic church and a few other churches still standing. They’re not allowed back into their churches, even though the buildings are untouched, so they had a small service. By the way, this church is running a homeless ministry, and they are the only ones looking for over 150 missing homeless people because no one’s looking for them.
They held a small service at Airport Beach, which is in the north end of Lahaina, and it was just tears, I was crying through the service. And then they sang doxology, which is kind of a Southern Baptist, I’m not Southern Baptist, I’m more Indie Fundy, but they sang doxology at the end, which is a hymn praising the Lord and calling on others to praise the Lord, and they sang it in Hawaiian. I broke down. I did. I was in tears, because I was so angry at what had happened, and just these people, they’re still going. Some are numb, but some are just, they’re like, “Everyone here is genuinely family,” and there’s no limit to what they’re willing to sacrifice for each other.
Inez Stepman:
Then what can those of us who are not there do? Obviously, people have been donating to GoFundMes, they’ve been trying to do that individual… What would you say, I guess, first to people who are looking to open their wallets, the least that the rest of us can do, what can they do, and then also, what is important in terms of amplifying some of the things that you’re saying? I guess I’m thinking money and where to send the money, and how do we responsibly start participating in the coverage of what happened here in a way that we’re not feeding media outlets or doing it irresponsibly?
Tony Kinnett:
Or some nonprofit who’s going to use half of the money for something else, even though they may be in the name of something good, and there have been reports of that, as well. I’m not going to say the names of these groups because I haven’t checked in on it. I think that Tim and I have been up somewhere between 19 and 21 hours a day, because there’s so much to do and we’re here for such a little time and there’s work to be done. I have not looked at all of the GoFundMes and things. We’re doing a feature piece on local businesses that are doing toy drives, clothing drives. From what I’ve found, there’s more than enough food for people. A lot of things are full, as far as basic supplies.
If there’s anyone out here that by chance is exceptionally wealthy, I would say if you can afford it and find a way to do it, hire someone to ship out building materials yourself. Put a load of lumber and screws and framing material and siding and whatnot on a boat and send it over. That is infinitely useful at the appropriate time, and I’m sure there will be a point when rebuilding efforts really do begin heavily. That would be one thing that I don’t think anyone’s really said so far. Number two, I would say that we’ll try to, in a feature piece, share some places that are good to donate. I don’t want to act as an arbiter for what’s good or bad. I’ll probably take recommendations from locals that I’ve spoken to that we’ve already kind of been in touch with.
Finally, I would say this, and this is going to sound so silly and maybe self-serving, but when I suggested it, seriously, every single person I’ve suggested it was just overjoyed that I suggested it, is that if you have… Our flight here was in the 700s for a round trip, which is pretty wild for a flight to Hawaii, and the stay here is… The food’s expensive, but it’s not terribly expensive to rent a car. It’s not terribly expensive to stay in a place, especially because a lot of these places are so desperate for people to stay. If you can afford it, I know it sounds so silly in this economy to suggest, if you have $1,500 to spare or $2,000 to spare, come to Maui, come spend a few days here. Lahaina’s a small part of the western island. There is so much more to Maui to come, to enjoy, to endorse local businesses. You can try finding a couple of local businesses somewhere else, or come here and take a tour and talk to these people yourself. If it’s at all within your power, that’s what I’m going to try to do.
We don’t have a ton of money set aside for vacations. We’re in the middle of building a house, but we’re going to try to come back and try to spread some of this money around locally so that I don’t have to wonder if like when you’re donating to a Ukrainian nonprofit, is this actually going to help or is this going to some mid-level guy who is going to feed himself and then who’s going to pay for his own transport, and then you’re seeing a very small amount and make it to the individual? Personally, that’s what I would recommend, and from the people I’ve spoken to, prepare to send building materials/prepare to maybe come yourself or something like that, because some of these hole-in-the-wall businesses are going to need your help far more than some nonprofit is able to distribute to perhaps an isolated or localized location.
Inez Stepman:
I wanted to conclude this, because first, what individuals can do to help, but then the second piece of this that I think has to be necessary and part of the conversation is accountability for what happened here, what investigations, what information, most important information is still outstanding and needs to be investigated, and then what would you like to see in terms of beginning the process of holding people accountable for some of the decisions that they’ve made here that have quite literally cost children their lives?
Tony Kinnett:
I want to see House investigations into FEMA. I want to see House investigations into the chief of staff of the US Navy. I want to know why, on God’s green Earth, there weren’t fireboats from Pearl Harbor here while boats were burning into the harbor of Lahaina. That would be number one. I would like to see a state investigation from Hawaii on the police department. That MEMA officer who was the chief of staff of the mayor who resigned for health reasons and then vanished into thin air. No, you don’t get to resign and walk away from this. No, you don’t. I would very much like to see that individual brought to the fullest extent of justice possible. I would also like to see the House Oversight Committee take a look at how federal direction was given, and honestly, what comes to mind is Hillary Clinton and Benghazi, knowing things are going on and the president of the United States said, “Oh, no comment,” and then he went bicycling for three hours.
Again, this is another situation, Inez, you and I have talked about where you don’t need to have some grand personal communication skills to just not say something incredibly calloused and stupid, and I think there should be an investigation into what on Earth went on there. I remember when George Bush was dragged through the coals for his flyover over Katrina. We haven’t seen anything like that. I think that individuals also need to vote with their money and their viewership when it comes to these media outlets that sent people here and didn’t get the bare minimum of things that Tim and I found walking around and talking to random individuals. You’re telling me experienced journalistic crews couldn’t have dug some of this stuff up? I’m a 28-year-old former science teacher who has a small, dinky radio show from Eastern Central Indiana, and we’re finding things in investigations. You’re telling me some CNN or Fox journalists couldn’t have found this?
I want to demand answers from the Fox News crew. Why am I not seeing this on there? Fox and Friends was supposed to have me on tomorrow to talk about it, but apparently some Fox journalists got sulky because they weren’t having the Fox journalists that were here walking on ashes. I have yet to walk on any ashes, by the way, although I’ve breathed in a fair amount of the asbestos and lead paint, so I would demand those kinds of answers, and honestly, after this, I’m going to buy a Wall Street Journal subscription, as well. Normally, I’ve used The Daily Signal’s account to read their articles. I’m going to buy my own, because again, they sent people here to do real work.
I’m going to find out that Japanese news agency, and I don’t know how I’m going to support them, but that’s the kind of stuff that I think accountability-wise, you and I have talked about this before, one of the reasons the Independent Women’s Network is so powerful is because you guys get behind women who are doing good things, and then you put your time and attention into all of the fantastic things that the women that are part of your organization do. It’s phenomenal, and that kind of a thing needs to be happening here.
We can talk about election stuff and all of that other stuff later. It’s incredibly important because you have disaster responses and the same people get back into office, but most importantly, some Oversight investigations need to happen. These land grabs and things that I’m hearing about should be investigated. I don’t know anything about that yet, because that’s not what the average person here is talking about. Those are the small bits of accountability that I would put forward, and I hope you don’t think those are too elementary or perhaps too small in scope. I think those are good starting steps.
Inez Stepman:
I completely agree. I think that that would be a very good start at finding out what really happened here and holding people responsible for it. Sorry. Obviously, our thoughts go out to people, including one of our fellows, who are dealing with the aftermath of this horrible disaster in Lahaina, who are potentially grieving loved ones. Our thoughts are with you. Tony, thank you for your reporting. Thanks to The Daily Signal for actually doing the reporting that 12 or 13 days later has just not happened in the way that it needs to. Thank you for taking the hour out of, again, your 21-hour days to talk to us. Really appreciate it, Tony.
Tony Kinnett:
No problem. I love High Noon. I absolutely listened to it quite a bit. I really would like to take a moment to thank The Heritage Foundation, who employs us over at The Daily Signal, for messaging me on Wednesday of last week and saying, “Hey, you’re going to Maui,” and giving the resources necessary. That takes guts and a lot of work to just say, “Hey, you’re going. We’re not satisfied with the coverage, so pack your bags.” It’s good to know that there are organizations that are willing to just send people on a wish and a lark. I really appreciate the work that you guys are doing, as well, obviously, and as we’ve known each other for quite a bit. We’re going to make sure that we shine the full light because that’s the best disinfectant.
Inez Stepman:
Absolutely. Thanks again, Tony. Thank you to our listeners. High Noon with Inez Stepman is a production of the Independent Women’s Forum. As always, you can send comments and questions to [email protected]. Please help us out by hitting the subscribe button and leaving us a comment or review on Apple Podcasts, Acast, Google Play, YouTube, and iwf.org. Be brave, and we’ll see you next time on High Noon.