Trump Goes On Puzzling Truth Social Rant About California Wildfires
In what appears to be his first public statement addressing the multiple, devastating wildfires that have burned more than 1,000 structures in the Los Angeles area and killed at least two people, President-elect Donald Trump did nothing but blame the Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom.
In a convoluted rant on social media, Trump accused Newsom ― whom he called “Newscum” ― of mismanaging the state’s water, and said that once he’s in office, he will “demand” the governor to “allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA!”
Trump claimed that Newsom could have “allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt ... to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning,” but chose not to because “he wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt.”
Trump’s been blaming the fish for California wildfires since at least 2018, when he began condemning environmentalists (instead of climate change) for the state’s increasingly deadly blazes. Trump has simultaneously pushed for more of the state’s water to be used for agriculture.
It’s unclear whether Trump, who once said “vast amounts of water” are being “foolishly diverted into the Pacific Ocean,” understands how watersheds work.
“We have plenty of water to fight these wildfires,” Scott McLean, deputy chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, told HuffPost in 2018 when Trump first used California’s wildfires to push partisan policy.
“It is our changing climate that is leading to more severe and destructive fires.”
While some fire hydrants have run dry in the ongoing conflagration in Los Angeles, the issue has been one of reduced water pressure from extreme, sudden demand on the infrastructure ― not one of broader water availability in the region.
In 2018, after the Camp Fire in Northern California killed 85 people, destroyed 18,000 structures, and burned 95% of the town of Paradise in the deadliest wildfire in state history, then-President Trump again denied that climate change could be drying out America’s forests, leading to bigger, more damaging fires.
Instead, Trump proposed “raking” the forest floors.
“I was with the president of Finland and he said, ‘We have a much different —we’re a forest nation.’ He called it a forest nation, and they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things. And they don’t have any problem. And when they do, it’s a very small problem,” he said.
Finnish President Sauli Niinistö denied that he had ever told Trump to try raking the nation’s forests.