Trump and Maga allies are using the fires to attack leaders like Newsom – possibly foretelling power struggles ahead
If ever a situation cried out for elevating national unity over political divisions, the dystopian scenes emanating from the Los Angeles fires surely qualified.
The catastrophe that has left at least five people dead, more than 1,000 structures destroyed and forced thousands fleeing their homes would – in an ideal and less polarised America – spur humane empathy and solidarity in place of tribal partisanship.
Instead, amid nightmarish images eerily evocative of Cormac McCarthy’s dark post-apocalyptic novel, The Road, a political firestorm has sparked from Donald Trump and his supporters that seems as scorched earth in its characteristics as the blazes ravaging neighborhoods across Los Angeles.
Far from calling a temporary truce, the president-elect and his Maga (make America great again) acolytes have used the fires to attack the Democratic political ruling establishment in Los Angeles and California – possibly foretelling power struggles ahead over a range of issues after Trump assumes office this month.
The attacks have used disinformation, wild claims, conspiracy theories and extremist culture war tropes. But absent from their critique has been any acknowledgement that climate change has played any role in igniting the catastrophic fires – despite a consensus among experts that they have been caused by exceptional environmental conditions, including near hurricane-strength winds, low rainfall and unseasonably high temperatures.
The Republicans have instead blamed Gavin Newsom, California’s governor, for supposedly failing to ensure enough water was available to douse the infernos – along with his fellow Democrat, Karen Bass, the Los Angeles mayor, who drew flak for not returning from a pre-planned trip to Ghana until after the fires began. Also targeted has been the head of LA’s fire department, Kristin Crowley, derided as a “DEI [diversity, equity and inclusiveness] hire” in reference to her being the first openly gay woman to hold the position.
Spearheading it all was Trump himself with a convoluted post on his Truth Social platform that included his now-familiar schoolyard mockery of Newsom’s name.
“Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way,” Trump wrote.
“He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California…… On top of it all, no water for fire hydrants, [nor] firefighting planes. A true disaster!”
In later posts, Trump called on Newsom to resign and extended responsibility to Bass and Joe Biden, under whose presidency, he said, the Federal Emergency Management Agency [Fema – which last autumn had to tackle destructive storms in several southern states] had “no money”.
The governor’s office rebutted Trump’s claim on water shortages. “There is no such document as the water restoration declaration – that is pure fiction,” a spokesperson for Newsom said.
Newsom himself accused Trump of fixating on politics rather than easing human suffering.
“People are literally fleeing … People have lost their lives. Kids lost their schools, families completely torn asunder, churches burned down,” he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “This guy [Trump] wanted to politicise it. I have a lot of thoughts, and I know what I want to say. I won’t.”
Water specialists denounced Trump’s depiction of the resources in the Los Angeles area as inaccurate and “irresponsible”.
“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, a board member of the Metropolitan water district of southern California, told the website CalMatters.
“It’s not a matter of having enough water coming from northern California to put out a fire. It’s about the continued devastating impacts of a changing climate.”
Experts have also debunked claims that firefighters have been hampered by hydrants that lack water. The failure to produce water, they say, can be explained by low pressure caused by sudden excess demand made on the system through trying to extinguish the fires.
Yet factual rebuttals are in danger of wilting in the face of a rhetorical fusillade that has at times seemed orchestrated.
It has featured input on social media and conservative news channels from such Trump world luminaries as the entrepreneur Elon Musk, Charlie Kirk, the rightwing provocateur and founder of Turning Point USA, the Florida Congress member Byron Donalds, and even the Hollywood actor, James Woods, whose trenchant conservative views chime with many of Trump’s followers.
“This fire is not from ‘climate change,’ you ignorant asshole,” Woods, who cried in a live CNN interview after describing the loss of his home in the blaze, responded to another user on X.
“It’s because liberal idiots like you elect liberal idiots like Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass. One doesn’t understand the first thing about fire management and the other can’t fill the water reservoirs.”
Kirk said that Trump should use the disaster to pressure California into “serious reform” – starting with Crowley’s resignation as LA’s fire chief – as a condition for receiving federal disaster funds after he returns to the presidency on 20 January.
The theme was picked up in an exchange on the Fox Business Network involving Donalds, who blamed the fire on “the far-left woke policies of California”. That elicited enthusiastic agreement from the host, Stuart Varney, who said: “Yes. California politics just has to change.”
Trump eldest son, Donald Trump Jr even contrived to link the disaster to support for Ukraine in its war against Russia. He re-posted another user’s post linking to a nearly three-year-old news report about the LA fire department donating surplus equipment to Ukraine in the weeks after Russia invaded it.
Writing in Slate, the commentator Nitish Pahwa said the reaction boded ill for the response to climate-related disasters that may happen on Trump’s watch – and possibly beyond.
“We’re getting an early-year preview of how the United States is going to experience and respond to these rampaging climate disasters,” he wrote.
“This is just how every major climate disaster is going to unfold online from here on out … in an ecosystem where social media outlets have purposefully hobbled their ability to provide real-time, reliable updates to users, the people affected by those disasters are literally left in the dark.”
