Walls of fire devoured neighborhoods, forcing tens of thousands of residents to flee for their lives. But as a cataclysm fueled by windstorms charred swathes of Los Angeles, Donald Trump spotted an opportunity.
The president-elect responded to six massive blazes by reopening his long-term feud with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, landing an early jab on a Democratic governor and a state likely to emerge as a major opponent to his second term plans.
Trump and Newsom have clashed bitterly in the past, including over fire prevention, environmental policies, climate change, green vehicles and immigration.
And the incoming president wasted no time in laying the blame for simultaneous wildfires raging in the Los Angeles area that have so far killed at least five people.
Trump slammed “the gross incompetence and mismanagement of the Biden/Newscum Duo,” in a post on his Truth Social network. He claimed that California environmental policies that divert fresh water to preserve wetlands and wildlife were to blame for hydrants running dry. “I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA! He is the blame for this,” Trump wrote as part of a flurry of social media posts, later writing that Newsom should resign.
In Trump’s misinformation game, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s true that Newsom is responsible for diverting water to protect the delta smelt – “a worthless fish” in Trump’s words – and that, as a result, homes of Angelenos were burned down. The president-elect just needs enough people to believe it might be the case to inflict political damage on the governor, who’s one of the nation’s most high-profile Democrats and a possible 2028 presidential hopeful.
California is also a perfect target as a liberal state that went for Vice President Kamala Harris in last year’s election. The conceit of a state and city inflicting self-defeating environmental policies is a perfect fit for Trump’s narrative that liberal governance in blue states and cities invites chaos, crime and misery.
“This is not Government. I can’t wait till January 20th!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Newsom: ‘This guy wanted to politicize it’
There will be legitimate questions about California’s and Los Angeles’ level of preparedness for the fires. Newsom and city officials will be called to account for any failures – like many politicians tested in the crucible of natural disasters. But in such dire situations, blame usually awaits the ebbing of the crisis.
“I have a lot of thoughts about what I want to say, and I won’t,” the governor added.
In this specific case, Trump’s complaints about the freshwater issue being to blame for difficulties in responding appeared to be at best a vast simplification of complex factors at play.
But after a meeting with Republican senators on Thursday, the president-elect doubled down.
“This is a true tragedy, and it’s a mistake of the governor,” Trump told reporters. “They don’t have any water. Millions and millions of gallons of water that they have, and they send it out into the Pacific.”
But water officials said that while hydrants in Pacific Palisades did run dry early Wednesday, there was sufficient water in Southern California to fight the fires. The logistics of getting enough of it to Pacific Palisades – and at the rate overwhelmed firefighters need to control the blazes – were prohibitive.
Trump again showcases erratic response to national crises
Normal practice for a national leader when disaster strikes is to bury partisan grievances, unite behind Americans in need and pledge to stand with the victims for as long as it takes.
Even Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has often locked horns with Newsom and California in the past – especially over pandemic lockdowns – offered prayers and assistance to California. “When disaster strikes, we must come together to help our fellow Americans in any way we can,” DeSantis wrote on X.
Newsom praised his fellow Democrat, President Joe Biden, for quickly bringing the might of the federal government to bear as the infernos gathered strength with a major disaster declaration.
“It’s impossible for me to express the level of appreciation and cooperation we received from the White House in this administration,” Newsom said, standing alongside the president in Santa Monica on Wednesday. “So on behalf of all of us, Mr. President, thank you for being here.”
Biden said the federal government was prepared to do “anything and everything” to contain the fires and listed multiple military deployments to fight the disaster. He, however, ended the media availability on a jarring tonal note by marking the arrival of a new family member, after his granddaughter Naomi gave birth at an area hospital. “The good news is, I am a great-grandfather as of today,” he said.
The White House announced late Wednesday that Biden will no longer travel to Rome, Italy, this week as scheduled, canceling the trip in the final days of his presidency to monitor the wildfires.
Trump’s attacks on Biden and Newsom are his latest attempt to portray the outgoing administration as incompetent, apparently designed to flatter his own incoming White House team by comparison.
His comments suggest that his second administration, which begins in 11 days, will be just as unorthodox and turbulent as his first, and will be punctuated by angry outbursts on social media against his opponents even during crises.
A long history of bitter clashes
Trump and Newsom have a deeply antagonistic relationship, which is exacerbated by their sharply differing ideologies and the fact that mighty California has the power to frustrate some of the president-elect’s political priorities.
Trump is also fixated on the management of forests and fire prevention, including his view that Democratic jurisdictions conduct insufficient clearance of fallen foliage, which he insists is to blame for many fires.
“The Governor of California, @GavinNewsom, has done a terrible job of forest management,” Trump wrote on what was then Twitter in November 2019. “I told him from the first day we met that he must ‘clean’ his forest floors regardless of what his bosses, the environmentalists, DEMAND of him. Must also do burns and cut fire stoppers…..”
Trump’s tweet, during a previous California wildfire crisis, seemed incongruous at the time since it followed praise from Newsom for his efforts to help his state.
Environmentalists argue that the real problem that makes California so susceptible to worsening fire seasons is something that Trump refuses to accept exists – climate change. In the current crisis, parched earth and unseasonal heat made Los Angeles a tinderbox that was deeply vulnerable to the added catalyst of roaring high winds that spread fires.
During another California wildfires crisis, as millions of acres burned in 2020, Trump dismissed an appeal from Wade Crowfoot, the state’s natural resources secretary, to acknowledge the impact of global warming.
“It’ll start getting cooler. You just watch,” Trump said. When Crowfoot asked him to look at the science, he added: “I don’t think science knows, actually.”
Trump insisted on Capitol Hill Wednesday that he “got along well” with Newsom despite their differences.
But their renewed estrangement could be a problem for California as it will potentially soon be seeking hundreds of millions in dollars in federal disaster aid from the Republican-controlled White House and Congress.
“It looks like we are going to be the ones having to rebuild it,” Trump said after meeting the senators.
And Trump and Newsom will be at odds over more than fires. The governor has already pledged to act if Trump seeks to wipe out electric vehicle tax credits. And his state is likely to be at the vanguard of legal efforts to thwart Trump administration policies in many areas, including immigration and reproductive rights.
There are many previous examples of Trump politicizing national crises.
In 2017, he was criticized for his handling of Hurricane Maria that devastated Puerto Rico and killed nearly 3,000 people. There is blame to go around when relief efforts fall short, and the then-president was not solely responsible for the missteps in the federal and local responses. But he repeatedly blamed local leaders and complained about the level of aid that was required, falsely claiming that the operation was an “an incredible, unsung success.”
And Trump’s management of the Covid-19 pandemic contained multiple examples of him trying to preserve his political fortunes that ironically helped seal his defeat in the 2020 election.
More recently, Trump seized on the terror attack that killed 14 people in New Orleans on January 1, falsely implying on social media that the suspect was an undocumented migrant who recently crossed the southern border.
It was a reminder that in times of national stress, the president-elect’s first response has sometimes been to seek political gain instead of promoting unity and facts-based responses.