Incoming US president Donald Trump has used the wildfires ravaging Los Angeles to launch political attacks on outgoing President Joe Biden and California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom.
The Republican’s broadsides on Wednesday and Thursday came even as firefighters were still desperately trying to contain the blazes that have killed five people and destroyed more than 2,000 structures.
“One of the best and most beautiful parts of the United States of America is burning down to the ground. It’s ashes, and Gavin Newscum should resign. This is all his fault!!!” Trump said on his Truth Social network late Wednesday.
Trump — who habitually uses the nickname “Newscum” to disparage a governor widely seen as a future Democratic presidential hopeful — returned to the subject on Thursday morning as the blazes continued to rage.
Without providing evidence to back his claims, he variously accused Newsom of “incompetence” in managing the fires and of wasting water in drought-hit California.
The California governor strongly rejected Trump’s claims in an interview with CNN.
“People are literally fleeing… This guy wanted to politicize it. I have a lot of thoughts and I know what I want to say. I won’t,” Newsom said.
Trump also laid into incumbent Biden, saying on Wednesday that January 20, when he replaces him in the White House, “cannot come fast enough.”
“Let this serve, and be emblematic, of the gross incompetence and mismanagement of the Biden/Newscum Duo,” he said.
On Thursday, Trump accused Biden of diverting money to “Green New Scam” climate policies instead of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Biden has repeatedly denied steering funds away from FEMA, including in October when Trump made similar accusations after hurricanes devastated the US southwest a month before the 2024 US presidential election.
The Los Angeles fires have also seen Trump’s surrogates launch attacks on Democrats.
The world’s richest man Elon Musk, a key Trump ally, took to his social network X to link the disaster to a variety of factors — all without providing proof — including diversity hires among firefighters and the sending of aid to Ukraine.
California has long been a target of Trump’s ire, with the most populous US state long having voted for Democrats, even if Trump made some modest gains in the 2024 election.
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