Over the last few weeks, California Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom has been scoring points with the liberal horde by pushing back against Trump and ICE.
Now he is trying to ride that momentum into blaming Trump for the wildfires in California, so I felt the need to step in and shed a little light on this subject.
Let’s go all the way back to 2021, when Gavin got caught lying about wildfires and what he was doing to prevent them in the future.
Newsom was called out on-air over his claim that California had stepped up its game on this front. During an interview, the host brought up an investigation from CapRadio and California Newsroom that “found Newsom has overstated the success of forest management projects, and last year, the governor cut funding for fire prevention.”
CapRadio’s Scott Rudd was the one who broke the story, and he explained, “So early on, Newsom identified some key wildfire prevention projects, and that includes things like forest thinning and prescribed burns, and they were meant to protect some of the most vulnerable communities in California. And he claimed 90,000 acres were treated, but we found that's not true.
“The state's own data shows that, in reality, it was less than 12,000 acres, so just a fraction of what Newsom claimed. And looking at the bigger picture, not just those specific projects, we also found that the state's fire prevention work overall dropped by half last year, which was the worst wildfire season on record for California. And during that time, Newsom also slashed about $150 million from the state's wildfire prevention budget.”
We can also go back to former LA Fire Chief Kristin Crowley calling out the city for having made rather significant cuts to the budget, which would hamper response.
At the time, she stated those cuts "severely limited the Department's capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies.”
Mayor Bass refuted the claims, stating, "There were no reductions that were made that would have impacted the situation that we were dealing with over the last couple of days.
"The unprecedented windstorm, wind at such ferocity that we haven't seen in years, is the context in which we were dealing with this."
That now brings us to the most recent claim by Newsom made on X this week.
He posted, “Donald Trump isn’t just threatening CA’s disaster aid, he’s also pushing for dangerous cuts ahead of wildfire season. A 63% REDUCTION in the U.S. Forest Service’s budget. A 30% REDUCTION in workforce — 10,000 employees … He is literally playing politics with people’s lives.”
Bob Zybach, an author and wildfire expert who has led the Oregon Websites and Watersheds Project since 1996, sees things a bit differently, stating, “The problem is the financial end of it. It’s not Trump, it’s the people, the litigants, who keep suing to shut down the timber industry which has allowed the fuels to build up.”
California has problems, and it surely is not Donald Trump at the top of that list. The state has been mismanaged for decades, but they keep claiming it is the bad orange man who is behind it all. Political theater, my friends... political theater to score points to drive fundraising.
