Democratic lawmakers thank Trump, spar with him a bit, and ask when he’ll be back

At the end of a landmark, hour-long roundtable in the Pacific Palisades on Friday that broached partisan lines for a conversation over fire relief, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass leaned across a table toward President Donald Trump and offered a pointed question.

“We’ll look forward to you coming back?” Bass asked, a microphone picking up the exchange.

“We’ll be back, thank you,” Trump responded, offering a handshake.

It was a promise — expressed multiple times throughout his visit to fire-torn Los Angeles Friday — that Rep. Judy Chu, for one, hopes he’ll keep.

Trump, despite drawing much praise and thanks from Democratic representatives for touring the Palisades, didn’t make a visit to the Pasadena area, which was ravaged by the Eaton Fire. And Chu, in a post-roundtable press conference with a range of national media outside the Palisades’ Fire Station 69, issued a public plea for Trump to return to see the damage in Altadena.

“This is a working-class community,” Chu said, who represents Pasadena in the 28th District. “This is a community that is diverse, and in fact, there is a very large Black community in Altadena. And I want to make sure that they are not forgotten, and that they get the resources that they need.”

“And that is why I am here,” she continued. “I did remind President Trump about the devastation (of) Eaton, and he seemed to recognize that. I invited him to come. I hope that he does come.”

A range of Democratic leaders in California were left to grasp at an array of such promises from Trump on Friday, while widely expressing thanks for his visit. Chu particularly praised the president for coming to L.A. County within three days of his inauguration.

All expressed disagreements, certainly, with many of Trump’s expressed viewpoints — Rep. Brad Sherman pointed out that Trump had “made a number of comments, some helpful, some not so helpful.”

The most important, however, was an assertion from the president to California leaders that he’d “give you everything you want,” a broad statement that Democratic representatives clearly hoped to apply to large-scale federal fire relief.

“One statement, actually, that I will not forget, is when he said – ‘California will get what it needs,’” Chu said.

When challenged by a reporter who postured if Trump was simply referring to federal permits, Chu responded she’d “read it in a broader fashion.”

“I guess I’m trying to be optimistic here,” Chu said. “But, yes, I heard him say, ‘California will get what it needs.’ And I’m going to hold him to that.”

All, from Chu to Sherman to Rep. George Whitesides, were in agreement that they felt genuine sympathy from Trump for victims of the fire after seeing the wreckage on Friday. Still, Sherman, who represents the Palisades in California’s 32nd District, took an opportunity to poke holes at a variety of Trump’s comments.

The president expressed repeated support for California’s firefighters during the roundtable, which Sherman pointed was a direct flip from Trump’s address at Monday’s inauguration, where he’d said fires had burned in Los Angeles “without even a token of defense.” Sherman, too, pushed back on Trump’s claim that the fires could’ve been quelled by diverting water from Northern California to Southern California, which has been debunked by experts. And as Trump discussed eliminating the Federal Emergency Management Agency Friday, Sherman urged Trump to “improve FEMA rather than destroy it.”

As Trump and Bass, too, went back-and-forth Friday on a timeline for rebuilding the Palisades, Sherman emphasized the need for a safe but expedited timeline.

“We can’t be bureaucratic, and they can’t start rebuilding tomorrow — and we can’t create a system where they have to wait 18 months,” Sherman told the Southern California News Group, after the press conference. “And as far as exactly how many weeks it will take, and whether people do their own debris removal, and whether the government comes in and does the debris removal, we’re going to have to work that out.”

All who spoke at the presser, ultimately, emphasized the need for major federal financial help and no conditions to aid. And despite the back-and-forth jabs across party lines on Friday, Whitesides said he’d taken away a “desire to move heaven and earth quickly” from the roundtable.

“With this federal help, with a light that is shining on our devastated areas,” Chu said, “we want to send the message to everybody that we will rebuild, we are strong, and we will make this community the great community that it is again.”