Almost 180,000 people have received evacuation orders and firefighters are fighting against the clock to try to put out the five fires that have left at least five dead and devastated almost 11,000 hectares in Los Angeles. Donald Trump, 10 days away from assuming the presidency of the United States, has seen in the disaster an opportunity to target as many politicians and take them away from one of his great potential rivals in the next four years, the governor of California, Gavin Newsom. And to criticize, again, the White House of his predecessor, Joe Biden.
Newsom and Trump have clashed again and again since Trump first came to power in 2017. For the president-elect, progressive California embodies everything he detests: policies that promote diversity, environmental protection and the fight against climate change, the use of electric vehicles, the reception of immigrants. A state that overwhelmingly supports the Democratic presidential candidate in each electoral cycle: in November, Vice President Kamala Harris, originally from that territory, won there. And Newsom, former mayor of liberal San Francisco, Harris’ representative during the 2024 campaign and likely contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2028 elections, represents all of this.
The governor was one of the first Democratic politicians to react to Trump’s clear victory in last November’s elections, by taking steps to protect his state’s progressive policies: “We are not going to cower and let them turn us into their prey.” , he promised, in reference to the republican control of the three powers, the executive, the legislative and the judicial.
Now, Trump has found an argument to rekindle that feud and blame Newsom and his policies for the disaster in Southern California.
In a series of messages on his social network, Truth, in which he nicknames the governor “Gavin Newscum” [su apodo para el gobernador, traducible como ‘Gavin Nueva Basura’]writes that “the fire has spread rapidly for three days, no containment. No one has seen numbers this bad until now! Great incompetence of Gavin Newscum and Karen Bass [la alcaldesa de Los Ángeles]…And Biden’s risk management agency has no money. It’s all been spent on the New Green Scam! Los Angeles is devastated!”
His big argument, on this occasion, focuses on Californian environmental policies, which transfer water to protect wetlands and the ecosystem in them. The president-elect accuses his political rival of having blocked a water transfer that he approved in 2020 from the much colder and wetter north of the state to the south, and of wasting water to protect an endangered fish. He blames these measures for the fact that the water hydrants that the firefighters had to use to put out the fire were dry.
“He wanted to protect a fish that is basically worthless by giving it less water (it didn’t work!) but the people of California didn’t care,” wrote the Republican leader, who will return to the White House on the 20th. “Now we have to pay the price” of that decision, he added. “I will demand that this incompetent governor allows fresh, clean, beautiful water to flow to California! “He is to blame for this!” he insisted in another message. He also includes the Biden Administration in his complaints, and demands that Newsom resign.
After a meeting in Congress in Washington with Republican Party legislators, he insisted again: “It is a complete tragedy, and a mistake by the governor.” he assured. “They have millions and millions of liters of water and they throw them into the Pacific.” He also attacked Biden in another message: “No water in the water hydrants, no money in the disaster management agency. That’s what Joe Biden leaves me. Thanks, Joe!”
As on other occasions in which he has launched or promoted hoaxes, including his famous accusations of eating cats and dogs against Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, it does not matter that things are not as the president-elect presents them. California firefighters have pointed out the superhuman demand unleashed by the ferocity and volume of the fires, which they are still struggling to control, as the cause of the problems at the hydrants. That there is enough water in the area to meet the demand, but the complicated thing is to move it to the precise area of the fires, in the hills of the Palisades and Pasadena-Altadena. And the measures to protect the species of fish in question, the San Francisco smelt (smelt in English), have nothing to do with the water supply for Los Angeles, according to Californian authorities.
Democrats have been quick to respond. “People are fleeing, literally. There have been people who have lost their lives; children who have been left without schools; families completely broken, churches burned. And this guy wants to politicize it,” Newsom told CNN television. His spokesman, Gardon, has insisted that “the governor is focused on protecting people, not politicking, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need.”
Newsom declared a state of emergency in California on the same Tuesday, as the fires gained virulence. On Wednesday, President Joe Biden proclaimed the state an emergency zone, allowing the allocation of federal funds to combat the disaster.
Biden, who was in California since Monday night for a series of official events, visited a fire station on Wednesday. The outgoing head of state announced late Wednesday night that he was canceling his planned trip to Italy, the last abroad of his mandate, due to the fires. After attending the state funeral for former President Jimmy Carter this Thursday, he was scheduled to receive a briefing this Thursday from participants in the disaster response efforts.
Biden has insisted that the US government is willing to do “absolutely everything” necessary to contain the fires.
