President-elect Donald Trump exploited a historic wildfire crisis to launch petty insults at a political opponent Wednesday as tens of thousands of Los Angeles residents fled the city’s worst natural disaster in decades.
“One of the best and most beautiful parts of the United States of America is burning down to the ground,” Trump wrote, in a late-night post to his Truth Social platform. “It’s ashes, and Gavin Newscum should resign. This is all his fault!!!”
“Newscum” is Trump’s self-fashioned epithet for California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has feuded with the president-elect in recent months over a wide spectrum of policy issues.
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Earlier in the day, in another Truth Social post, Trump spread the blame evenly between “the gross incompetence and mismanagement of the Biden/Newscum Duo,” roping President Joe Biden into an extended tantrum about the wildfires that began Tuesday in Los Angeles County.
Newsom lamented Trump’s antics. “People are literally fleeing, people have lost their lives, kids lost their schools, families completely torn asunder, churches burned down,” Newsom told CNN in an interview. “This guy wanted to politicize it.”
Other members of Trump’s Republican Party—like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who offered California prayers and assistance from his state—took a more traditionally diplomatic and nonpartisan approach to a crisis.
Trump, meanwhile, has insisted that California water policies under Newsom are responsible for the wildfires, claiming they better serve the endangered Delta smelt fish than the state’s residents.
One local expert said Trump’s hyper-partisan remarks don’t reflect the reality of California’s water systems.
“Tying Bay-Delta management into devastating wildfires that have cost people’s lives and homes is nothing short of irresponsible, and it’s happening at a time when the Metropolitan Water District has the most water stored in its system in the history of the agency,” Mark Gold, the water scarcity director for the Natural Resources Defense Council and a member of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California’s board, told CalMatters.
The fires began and spread as a result of a combination of unusually strong winds and dry conditions.
“It’s not a matter of having enough water coming from Northern California to put out a fire,” added Gold. “It’s about the continued devastating impacts of a changing climate.”
Trump has often rejected climate science, including during 2020 wildfires in California during his first term. “It’ll start getting cooler, you just watch,” he told the state’s Natural Resources Secretary, who asked him to consider global warming as a factor.
As of early Thursday morning, over 100,000 LA-area residents have fled, with five fires burning across the city.
Trump’s feuding with Newsom goes back years, but escalated last year when the leading Democrat was a key surrogate for Biden’s doomed reelection bid.
In response to Trump’s victory, Newsom has gone about drafting a series of initiatives to “Trump-proof” his state from hardline MAGA policies on immigration, climate change and healthcare issues like abortion.
Now, with Trump set to take office in less than two weeks, Newsom will soon likely be leaning on Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress to release federal disaster aid.
“We are going to be the ones having to rebuild it,” Trump said during a press conference Wednesday. “I don’t think there is anything that I have ever seen quite like it.”
