Trump seizes on Los Angeles inferno to reopen feud with Newsom

CNN
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Walls of fire engulfed neighborhoods and forced tens of thousands of residents to flee for their lives. But as disaster-driven windstorms charred parts of Los Angeles, Donald Trump spotted an opportunity.

The president-elect responded to six massive fires by reopening his long-running feud with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, leading to a shot at a Democratic governor and a state likely to prove a major opponent of 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 president-elect wasted no time laying the blame for simultaneous wildfires raging in the Los Angeles area, which have so far killed at least five people.

Trump criticized “the gross incompetence and mismanagement of the Biden/Newscum Duo” in a post on his Truth Social network. He argued that California’s environmental policies, which divert fresh water to preserve wetlands and wildlife, were to blame for hydrants running dry. “I will demand that this incompetent governor allows beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA! He is to blame for this,” Trump wrote as part of a flurry of social media posts, later writing, that Newsom should resign.

In Trump’s disinformation game, it doesn’t matter if it’s true that Newsom is responsible for diverting water to protect the Delta smelt—”a worthless fish,” in Trump’s words—and that Angelenos’ homes burned down as a result. The president-elect just needs enough people to believe it might be the case to inflict political damage on the governor, who is one of the country’s most high-profile Democrats and a possible 2028 presidential candidate.

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-destructive environmental policies fits perfectly with Trump’s narrative that liberal governance in blue states and cities invites chaos, crime and misery.

“This is not the government. I can’t wait for January 20!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

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 serious situations, blame usually waits for the crisis to subside.

Newsom told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that “you can’t even respond” to Trump’s attacks. “People are literally fleeing, people have lost their lives, children lost their schools, families were completely torn apart, churches burned down – this guy wanted to politicize it.”

“I have a lot of thoughts about what I want to say, and I don’t want to,” the governor added.

In this specific case, Trump’s complaints that the freshwater issue is to blame for difficulties in responding seemed at best to be a gross oversimplification 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 by the governor,” Trump told reporters. “They don’t have any water. Millions and millions of gallons of water they have, and they’re dumping it into the Pacific Ocean.”

But water officials said that while hydrants in Pacific Palisades ran dry early Wednesday, there was enough water in Southern California to fight the fires. The logistics of getting enough of it to Pacific Palisades—and at the speed at which overwhelmed firefighters need to control the flames—were prohibitive.

Still, Trump’s attack was a characteristic attempt to politicize a natural disaster while it’s still unfolding. Newsom spokesman Anthony York told CNN that “we are focused on protecting lives and fighting these flames — not playing politics.”

Normal practice for a national leader when disaster strikes is to bury partisan charges, rally behind Americans in need, and promise to stand with the victims 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 help 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 federal government’s powers to bear as the infernos gathered strength with a major disaster declaration.

“It is impossible for me to express the level of appreciation and cooperation we received from the White House in this administration,” said Newsom, who stood with 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 more military deployments to combat the disaster. However, he ended the media availability on a poignant 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 that I’m a great-grandfather today,” he said.

The White House announced late Wednesday that Biden will no longer travel to Rome, Italy, this week as planned, 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 his second administration, which begins in 11 days, will be as unorthodox and turbulent as his first, and will be marked by outbursts of anger on social media against his opponents even during crises.

Trump and Newsom have a deeply antagonistic relationship, exacerbated by their starkly different ideologies and the fact that mighty California has the power to frustrate some of the president-elect’s policy priorities.

Trump is also fixated on forest management and fire prevention, including his view that Democratic jurisdictions do insufficient clearance of fallen leaves, which he insists is to blame for many fires.

“California Governor @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 needs to ‘clean up’ his forest floors regardless of what his bosses, environmentalists, DEMAND of him. Must also do burns and cut fire plugs….”

Trump’s tweet, during an earlier wildfire crisis in California, seemed incongruous at the time as 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 soil and unusual heat turned Los Angeles into a tinderbox, deeply vulnerable to the added catalyst of roaring high winds that spread fires.

Amid yet another wildfire crisis in California, as millions of acres burned in 2020, Trump rejected an appeal by Wade Crowfoot, the state’s natural resources secretary, to acknowledge the impact of global warming.

“It’s starting to get cooler. You’ll just have to watch,” Trump said. When Crowfoot asked him to look at the science, he added, “I don’t think the science actually knows.”

Trump insisted on Capitol Hill Wednesday that he “got along well” with Newsom despite their differences.

But their renewed alienation could be a problem for California as it potentially soon seeks hundreds of millions of dollars in federal disaster aid from the Republican-controlled White House and Congress.

“It looks like we’re going to be the ones to rebuild it,” Trump said after the meeting with senators.

And Trump and Newsom will disagree about more than fires. The governor has already promised to act if Trump tries to wipe out tax credits for electric cars. And his state is likely to be at the forefront of legal efforts to counter 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, which devastated Puerto Rico and killed nearly 3,000 people. There is blame to go around when relief efforts fall short, and the president at the time 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 needed, falsely claiming the operation was an “unbelievable, unsung success.”

And Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic featured several examples of him trying to preserve his political fortunes, which ironically helped seal his defeat in the 2020 election.

More recently, Trump seized on the terrorist attack that killed 14 people in New Orleans on Jan. 1, falsely suggesting 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 rather than promote unity and fact-based responses.