Are the wildfires entirely the fault of Newsome, LA's Mayor and Fire Chief (link below)? No but they deserve a big heap of the blame. Had they not screwed up the water management, the removal of dangerous tinder/underbrush (handled properly in past decades) and not cut the Fire Dept's budget by $17 million the results would have been bad, but certainly not as catastrophic.
California's Dem government deserves to be a punching bad. They earned it. The proof of their incompetence is the mass exodus of residents from their messed-up state.
Trump will drag Newscum through the ringer and all the buffoons who run LA. He should deride them without mercy.
In the end, he'll come through with federal funds, but not before exposing the morons who run the state and cutting them off at the knees. This fire is going to help convince voters in the Golden State to clean the swamp. Finally!
Papa Bear is wrong a lot! But not this time.
California Has Long Been Trump’s Punching Bag. Now Los Angeles Needs His Help.
The president-elect and Gov. Gavin Newsom have had a rocky relationship for years
By Annie Linskey, WSJ
Jan. 9, 2025 7:00 pm ET
President-elect Donald Trump’s critiques of California have become a central part of his political brand. He has called the state “crime-ridden,” overrun with migrants and “failing,” and he frequently spars with the state’s Democratic political leaders.
Now, less than two weeks before Trump, a Republican, takes control of the White House for a second time, it will fall to him to help lead the recovery of California’s largest city from wildfires this week that have laid waste to entire neighborhoods, uprooted tens of thousands of residents and overwhelmed firefighters.
The disaster will test the often-tense relationship between Trump and Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and offer an early signal of how the incoming president will govern. The recovery could cost tens of billions of dollars and will require extraordinary coordination between federal, state and local officials.
Over the last 48 hours, Trump has lobbed insults at Newsom and argued he hasn’t done enough to prepare for a disaster of this scale.
“Gross incompetence by Gavin Newscum,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Thursday, using his derisive nickname for the governor that purposefully misspells his last name. On Wednesday, Trump called on Newsom to resign.
Newsom, with a building burning behind him, responded briefly Wednesday to Trump’s broadsides. “People are literally fleeing, people have lost their lives,” Newsom said in an interview with CNN. “This guy wanted to politicize it. I have a lot of thoughts and I know what I want to say. I won’t.”
Newsom was elected governor in 2018, about two years into Trump’s first term, after running a campaign that the Los Angeles Times described as “anchored in his criticism of Trump.” As governor, the state of California sued the Trump administration dozens of times. In November, after Trump won his second term, Newsom called a special session of the state legislature to fund another round of lawsuits against the Trump administration over expected new federal policies on the environment, immigration and abortion rights.
In times of crisis, however, the two have sometimes taken a conciliatory approach. “I don’t choose to wake up every morning looking to pick a fight,” Newsom said in November 2018, shortly after winning the governor’s mansion. About a week later, Newsom accompanied Trump for a tour of the wreckage from the state’s deadliest fire in Paradise, Calif. Both men pledged to work together.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, Newsom praised Trump for his responsiveness to the state. “Every single direct request he was capable of meeting, he has met,” Newsom said of Trump in April 2020, crediting him with sending a hospital ship to the state.
Trump spoke briefly about the fires and the impending recovery Wednesday while in Washington. “The governor has not done a good job,” Trump said.
But he added another beat about Newsom: “I got along well with him when he was governor,” he said. “We worked together really well and we would work together.”
Newsom is “focused on protecting people, not playing politics,” said Izzy Gardon, a spokeswoman for the California governor. A spokeswoman for Trump’s transition team didn’t respond to a request for comment.
When he was president, Trump was at times hesitant to provide federal disaster aid. After a hurricane devastated Puerto Rico in 2017, he expressed reluctance to send aid, raising concerns about corruption on the island. He falsely claimed that an estimate of the hurricane’s death toll was inflated by Democrats who were trying to undermine his response to the devastation. Eventually, the Trump administration released billions of dollars to rebuild the island.
Politico’s E & E News reported earlier this year that Trump hesitated to send disaster aid to California following 2018 wildfires, raising frustrations with the state’s leftward political leanings.
In his social-media posts in recent days, Trump has said the state’s water-management efforts are overprotective of wildlife and therefore limit the amount of flow to the city. That has become a top obstacle to fighting the fires, he argued.
“I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA!” Trump posted on Truth Social.
Environmentalists reject the claim, saying that water supply in Southern California is at historically high levels. The problem, they say, is that several wet years supercharged vegetation growth and then a roughly 8-month drought dried out those plants, leaving the area with an abundance of fuel for a fire that spread via 100 mile-an-hour winds.
“Basically the whole LA region, really most of southern California, is a tinderbox,” said Mark Gold, water scarcity solutions director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It doesn’t matter how amazing your firefighting resources are. It’s just beyond what can be handled.”
Fighting the initial Palisades fire exhausted some water supplies because of the “extraordinary nature” of the blaze, according to the governor’s office, which noted that urban fire-suppression systems are built for one-off fires in a house or building, not for a wildfire. In some instances, pump stations at lower elevations didn’t have enough pressure to refill tanks at higher elevations.
Still, Newsom’s office said that there isn’t a water shortage in Southern California. The Orange County Water District, which supplies groundwater to some of the Los Angeles region, has enough supply for 2.5 million customers for at least three years, they said.
Trump also has cast blame on President Biden, saying that the Federal Emergency Management Agency isn’t properly funded.
“Biden’s FEMA has no money,” Trump posted on Truth Social. Last month, Congress passed supplemental disaster funding, and the current balance of the agency’s Disaster Relief Fund is at roughly $27 billion, according to the Biden administration.
Trump made the unusual move of campaigning in California toward the end of the 2024 presidential race, holding a rally at the Calhoun Ranch in the Coachella Valley.
Though the state remains deep blue, the electorate has warmed toward Trump. In 2016, Trump won 31% of the vote. That figure improved four years later to 34%. By 2024, despite running against Vice President Kamala Harris, a former California senator and attorney general, Trump’s share of the vote increased even more—to 38%.
Scott Calvert contributed to this article.