Trump chastises the people of California

Written by

Ophelia Benson

in

For Trump’s other loving contribution of the day, he decided to shout at California for being on fire.

Hours after officials announced grim new statistics in California’s Camp Fire — nine dead, more than 6,700 structures incinerated — President Trump blamed poor forest management for the destruction and threatened to pull federal funding.

“There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor,” Trump tweeted Saturday morning. “Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”

A normal president would express compassion and concern, and nothing else. While the fires are still blazing and eating people and their houses, a normal president would leave all anger and threats aside. I guess making American great again requires getting in people’s faces even as the fire is scorching them.

The latest tweet came as residents in Butte County, about 90 miles north of state capital Sacramento, described fleeing a catastrophic fire that began on Thursday grew with incredible speed and turned a sunny day into an end-of-days scene of flames, smoke, sparks and wide destruction.

Named Camp Fire for a nearby creek, the blaze is not yet done. It had burned at least 90,000 acres, more than 140 square miles, and was only 20 percent contained by Saturday morning, causing officials to declare a state of emergency for a fire likely to worsen over the weekend.

Officials warned that “red flag” conditions would persist on and off through Monday, hot, dry and windy weather that makes the land ripe for a fire’s spread.

Trump’s repeated rants about forest management seems to be his rebuttal to arguments that the fires are a result of climate change.

Trump has loudly and consistently blamed intensifying wildfires on poor resource management by California officials. Twice in October, Trump threatened to withhold federal wildfire funds from California because of what he alleged was poor forest management policy, The Fix’s Aaron Blake wrote.

Universally, California officials’ response has been that the real culprit behind intensifying wildfires is climate change.

As The Washington Post’s Angela Fritz wrote in July, a hotter-than average summer and dry winter have “led to tinder-dry vegetation,” in areas scorched by the Carr fire during Redding, California’s hottest July on record.

It’s hard work for Trump arguing that that’s all Jerry Brown’s fault.

Comments

12 responses to “Trump chastises the people of California”

  1. Acolyte of Sagan Avatar
    Acolyte of Sagan

    I suppose Trump’s idea of ‘good’ forest management would be to flatten the lot, sell the lumbar, and build lots and lots of shiny Trump-branded monstrosities as far as the eye can see.

  2. Acolyte of Sagan Avatar
    Acolyte of Sagan

    That’ll be ‘lumber’!

  3. Holms Avatar
    Holms

    Hours after officials announced grim new statistics in California’s Camp Fire — nine dead, more than 6,700 structures incinerated — President Trump blamed poor forest management for the destruction and threatened to pull federal funding.

    Good idea, that’ll fix it.

  4. Screechy Monkey Avatar
    Screechy Monkey

    You know how Trump (claims) to be an expert on physics because his uncle was an MIT professor? Well, Trump is also an expert in forest management, because his father cut down some trees to make flaming crosses.

  5. Catwhisperer Avatar
    Catwhisperer

    AoS: I think you’ve got the right idea. Well, not about selling the lumbar, that sounds painful ;) but if those pesky trees had been chopped down like they oughta, there would be nothing to burn. No forest, no forest fires. You don’t have to be a stable genius to work that out.

  6. Theo Bromine Avatar
    Theo Bromine

    Odd how this is the appropriate time to berate CA for their forestry practices, when it always seems to be “too soon” to discuss gun control in the immediate aftermath of mass shootings.

  7. Dave Ricks Avatar
    Dave Ricks

    As the Washington Post reported, the California Professional Firefighters president Brian Rice issued a response that I’ll copy here in full:

    The president’s message attacking California and threatening to withhold aid to the victims of the cataclysmic fires is Ill-informed, ill-timed, and demeaning to those who are suffering as well as the men and women on the front lines.

    At a time when our every effort should be focused on vanquishing the destructive fires and helping the victims, the president has chosen instead to issue an uninformed political threat aimed squarely at the innocent victims of these cataclysmic fires.

    At this moment, thousands of our brother and sister firefighters are putting their lives on the line to protect the lives and property of thousands. Some of them are doing so even as their own homes lay in ruins. In my view, this shameful attack on California is an attack on all our courageous men and women on the front lines.

    The president’s assertion that California’s forest management policies are to blame for catastrophic wildfire is dangerously wrong. Wildfires are sparked and spread not only in forested areas but in populated areas and open fields fueled by parched vegetation, high winds, low humidity and geography. Moreover, nearly 60 percent of California forests are under federal management, and another one-third under private control. It is the federal government that has chosen to divert resources away from forest management, not California.

    Natural disasters are not “red” or “blue” – they destroy regardless of party. Right now, families are in mourning, thousands have lost homes, and a quarter-million Americans have been forced to flee. At this desperate time, we would encourage the president to offer support in word and deed, instead of recrimination and blame.

    I admire how well that response was written. Trump is so blatantly narcissistic and solipsistic, it’s hard to know how to respond to him. I expect him to learn nothing, but people still need to say something. The response was intelligent to address the public more than the president, and to tell the public how the president was wrong and what he should do instead.

  8. Guest post: Thousands of our brother and sister firefighters are putting their lives on the line – Butterflies and Wheels

    […] a comment by Dave Ricks on Trump chastises the people of […]

  9. Loren Petrich Avatar
    Loren Petrich

    He seems almost like he has some big grudge against California. What did that state ever do to him? Did some California NIMBY’s once object to some proposed Trump golf course?

  10. Ophelia Benson Avatar
    Ophelia Benson

    Oh, gosh, so many ways – liberal, not a fan of his glorious self, never asked him to star in all the movies, etc etc etc.

  11. Lady Mondegreen Avatar
    Lady Mondegreen

    Oh, gosh, so many ways – liberal, not a fan of his glorious self, never asked him to star in all the movies, etc etc etc

    …Sanctuary state–

    [In March] speaking to the California Peace Officers’ Association in Sacramento, Sessions announced that the Department of Justice was suing the state for passing three laws to protect undocumented immigrants––measures, Sessions said, that “intentionally obstruct the work of our sworn immigration-enforcement officers.” California, he continued, was endangering those officers and “advancing an open-borders philosophy shared by only the most radical extremists.”

    Jerry Brown, a Democrat, now in his fourth term as governor of California, reacted to Sessions with undisguised irritation. He had signed the most inflammatory of the laws—the so-called sanctuary-state law, which limits local and state coöperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement—only after demanding many changes. He wanted to insure that ice would still be able to do its job. His contempt for the White House was palpable. “Look, we know the Trump Administration is full of liars,” Brown told reporters.

    –resists Trump on climate science–

    n December 14, 2016, Brown gave his first major speech since Trump’s election, at the American Geophysical Union conference, in San Francisco. He told an audience of thousands of scientists that California would continue its efforts to thwart climate change, regardless of federal policy and corporate lobbying. “We’ve got the scientists, we’ve got the lawyers, and we’re ready to fight,” he said. Some scientists feared that the new Administration would defund nasa’s climate-research satellite missions. Brown seemed unfazed: “If Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite!

    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/03/26/inside-californias-war-on-trump

    And, hell, even Orange County is turning Blue.

  12. Lady Mondegreen Avatar
    Lady Mondegreen

    Oops. Forgot the first blockquote. Sorry!

More posts