Discussing the California wildfires on the July 10 edition of his nationally syndicated radio program, Michael Savage said: “The Smokeys that are running around with .45's on their hips, the mean-faced, clipped-haired, fat-hipped women, would consult a 75-page manual and have to call Denver and get an answer in seven weeks about what to do before the forest fire could even be stopped. They don't know what to do. They have to consult a manual.”

Earlier, Savage stated: “I'm going to raise something that no one has raised in the media. We've had a bunch of forest fires in California, a thousand of them over the last few weeks. Michael Savage suspects that there are agents of Iran who have set these forest fires to a certain extent, certainly not all of them.” He also said: "[A] week ago, one of the Iranian psychos said publicly that 'we'll burn America down if you attack Iran, we have agents in place.' Why should I assume that in a wide-open country like this that Iranian agents are not setting forest fires? Why should I make the assumption they're not?"

Savage asserted that the “manual” that the “mean-faced, clipped-haired, fat-hipped women” were supposedly “consult[ing]” was written by bureaucrats “to make sure nobody's offended.”

Talk Radio Network, which syndicates Savage's show, claims that Savage is heard on more than 350 radio stations. The Savage Nation reaches at least 8.25 million listeners each week, according to Talkers Magazine, making it one of the most listened-to talk radio shows in the nation, behind only The Rush Limbaugh Show and The Sean Hannity Show.

From the July 10 edition of Talk Radio Network's The Savage Nation:

SAVAGE: All right, John, now I'm going to raise something that no one has raised in the media. We've had a bunch of forest fires in California, a thousand of them over the last few weeks. Michael Savage suspects that there are agents of Iran who have set these forest fires to a certain extent -- certainly not all of them. Why do I say that, and where do I have the audacity to come up with a statement like that? Because a week ago, one of the Iranian psychos said publicly that “we'll burn America down if you attack Iran, we have agents in place.” Why should I assume that in a wide-open country like this that Iranian agents are not setting forest fires? Why should I make the assumption they're not?

In fact, I would assume they are. Now, the reason they can get away with it is because that they found five agents with headdresses, with butane torches in a forest fire -- in a forest. The Smokeys that are running around with .45's on their hips, the mean-faced, clipped-haired, fat-hipped women, would consult a 75-page manual and have to call Denver and get an answer in seven weeks about what to do before the forest fire could even be stopped. They don't know what to do. They have to consult a manual. Why? Because the manuals are written by a bureaucrat. The bureaucrats write the manuals to make sure nobody's offended. They got to make certain, not that the forest doesn't burn, but that racial profiling does not occur. Now, you wouldn't want to make a Middle Easterner uncomfortable, even if you found him with a blowtorch in the middle of a tinderbox forest, would you?

You'd rather see -- see, the liberal mindset would say, “I'd rather see -- I'd rather see a thousand forests burn than one Middle Easterner arrested by mistake.” That's the liberal mindset. They've said this for years. They've said this for 50 years, the liberals on the Supreme Court, the liberals on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Their mindset and the ACLU is, “I would rather see 99 guilty men go free than one innocent man arrested.” So that's why I say they'd rather see a thousand forests burn than one Middle Easterner stopped because of racial profiling. And that's why America is on its knees, that's why the enemy is so emboldened, and that's the problem as I see it.

Zachary Aronow is an intern at Media Matters for America.