WASHINGTON (AP) — As cataclysmic wildfires rage across Los Angeles, President-elect Donald Trump hasn’t been offering much sympathy. Instead, he’s claiming he could do a better job managing the crisis, spewing falsehoods and casting blame on the state’s Democratic governor.
Trump has lashed out at his longtime political foe Gov. Gavin Newsom’s forest management policies and falsely claimed the state’s fish conservation efforts are responsible for fire hydrants running dry in urban areas. Referring to the governor by a derisive nickname, Trump said he should resign.
Meanwhile, more than 180,000 people were under evacuation orders and the fires have consumed more than 45 square miles (116 square kilometers). One that destroyed the neighborhood of Pacific Palisades became the most destructive blaze in Los Angeles history.
Trump v. Newsom: Round 2 was to be expected — the liberal Democrat has long been one of Trump’s biggest foils. But the Western fires are also a sign of something far more grave than a political spat or a fight over fish. Wildfire season is growing ever longer thanks to increasing drought and heat brought on by climate change.
Trump refuses to recognize the environmental dangers, instead blaming increasing natural disasters on his political opponents or on acts of God. He has promised to drill for more oil and cut back on renewable energy.
On Thursday, Trump said on social media that Newsom should “open up the water main” — an overly simplistic solution to a complex problem. “NO MORE EXCUSES FROM THIS INCOMPETENT GOVERNOR,” Trump said, adding, “IT’S ALREADY FAR TOO LATE!”
Standing on the street in a scorched subdivision as a home behind him was engulfed in flames, Newsom responded to the criticism when asked about it by CNN.
“People are literally fleeing. People have lost their lives. Kids lost their schools. Families completely torn asunder. Churches burned down, and this guy wants to politicize it,” Newsom said. “I have a lot of thoughts and I know what I want to say, but I won’t.”
In a post on his Truth Social media network, Trump tried to connect dry hydrants to criticism of the state’s approach to balancing the distribution of water to farms and cities with the need to protect endangered species, including the Delta smelt. Trump has sided with farmers over environmentalists in a long-running dispute over California’s scarce water resources. But that debate has nothing to do with the hydrant issue in Los Angeles, driven by an intense demand on a municipal system not designed to battle such blazes.
Trump hosted Republican governors at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida on Thursday night and suggested that, upon taking office, he’d pressure California into changing its water policies.
“We’re gonna force that upon him now,” the president-elect said of Newsom. “But it’s very late because I think it’s one of the great catastrophes in the history of our nation.”
About 40% of Los Angeles city water comes from state-controlled projects connected to northern California and the state has limited the water it delivers this year. But the southern California reservoirs these canals help feed are at above-average levels for this time of year.
Roughly 20% of hydrants across the city went dry as crews battled blazes, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said. Firefighters in Southern California are accustomed to dealing with the strong Santa Ana winds that blow in the fall and winter, but the hurricane-force gusts earlier in the week took them by surprise. The winds grounded firefighting aircraft that should have been making critical water drops, straining the hydrant system.
“This is unlike anything I’ve seen in my 25 years on the fire department,” Los Angeles Fire Capt. Adam VanGerpen told CBS This Morning.
Janisse Quiñones, head of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said the ferocity of the fire made the demand for water four times greater than “we’ve ever seen in the system.”
Hydrants are designed for fighting fires at one or two houses at a time, not hundreds, Quiñones said, and refilling the tanks also requires asking fire departments to pause firefighting efforts.
President Joe Biden, who was in California for an environmental event that ended up being canceled as the fires raged, appeared with Newsom at a Santa Monica firehouse on Wednesday. On Thursday, without naming Trump, he explained in a briefing how the hydrants had ended up dry, saying he was seeking to debunk rumors in “simple straightforward language.” In crisis, he said, “rumors and fear spread very quickly.”
“There is in case you haven’t noticed, there is global warming,” Biden said, adding “it’s not about the politics, it’s about getting people some sense of security.”
“Climate change is real,” he said emphatically.
Biden also quickly issued a major disaster declaration for California, releasing some immediate federal funds, and approved 100% federal funding for 180 days.
At the Mar-a-Lago meeting, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — Trump’s rival in last year’s GOP presidential primary — defended the president-elect as being willing to work with red states and blue states in emergencies. He also blamed the media for unnecessarily promoting controversy and political division between Newsom and Trump.
“I worked well with Biden, during his time, with natural disasters, and I worked well with Donald Trump,” DeSantis said, referring to hurricanes that have hit Florida as well as the deadly collapse of a beachfront condo in Surfside in 2021. “So, I’m very confident, as a state that knows — we face these — that a Trump administration is going to be very strong and going to be there for the people regardless of party.”
Still, any additional federal response will be overseen by Trump, who has a history of withholding or delaying federal aid to punish his political enemies.
In September, during a press conference at his Los Angeles golf course, Trump threatened: “We won’t give him money to put out all his fires. And if we don’t give him the money to put out his fires, he’s got problems.”
Trump’s support in California has increased in recent years, which could further embolden him in his tussles with Democratic leaders there. In 2024, he improved on his vote share in Los Angeles and surrounding areas hit by the fires by 4.68 percentage points. And while he still lost the state overall, he grew his overall margin by 4 points compared to the 2020 election.
As for the impact of the fires on Californians, Trump said areas in Beverly Hills and around it were “being decimated” and that he had “many friends living in those houses.” He framed the losses as a potential hit to the state’s finances.
“The biggest homes, some of the most valuable homes in the world are just destroyed. I don’t even know. You talk about a tax base, if those people leave you’re going to lose half your tax base of California,” Trump said.
