President Donald Trump landed in California on Friday afternoon to view the devastation from wildfires that have ripped through the Los Angeles area and continue to wreak havoc.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom greeted Trump on the tarmac when Air Force One landed in Los Angeles. The diametrically opposed politicians have sparred frequently, but they struck a more collegial tone during brief remarks to reporters at the airport.
Trump said that he appreciated Newsom meeting him, adding, “We want to get the problem fixed.” The president compared the devastation of fire-ravaged areas of southern California as looking like the city “got hit by a bomb.”
Newsom thanked Trump for visiting the state, saying, “We’re going to need your support.”
“You were there for us during Covid, I don’t forget that. And I have all the expectations that we’ll be able to work together to get the speedy recovery,” Newsom added.
This is Trump’s first presidential trip of his second term. He started the day by visiting hurricane-ravaged North Carolina, where, in front of evangelical leader Franklin Graham’s home, he shared what he said was his message for the people of the region: “You are not forgotten any longer.”
Trump, at each juncture, seemed to offer another message for the people of California. The fires, now blazing for weeks, “could have been put out,” Trump said before departing the White House on Friday. “They still haven’t for whatever reason.”
“It would be fine if they turned the water on,” the president added.
Among the advisers accompanying the president on the trip is his chief of staff Susie Wiles, national security adviser Mike Waltz and first lady Melania Trump. Filing in and out of Air Force One alongside the group is Hollywood producer Brett Ratner, who is directing the Amazon documentary about the first lady. Other crew members traveled with them.
Trump has repeatedly blamed California’s Democratic leaders at the state and local level for the persistent blazes, arguing that wildlife protections have impeded access to water.
“I want to see the water be released and come down into Los Angeles and throughout the state,” Trump continued after landing in North Carolina.
He later suggested he could withhold disaster aid to California over disagreements over voter ID laws and water policies.
“In California, we want them to have voter ID so the people have a voice, because right now, the people don’t have a voice because you don’t know who’s voting, and it’s very corrupt,” he said. “If they released the water when I told them to, because I told them to do it seven years ago, if they would’ve done it, you wouldn’t have had the problem.”
Previewing the visit earlier this week, he promised, “We’re going to take care of Los Angeles.”
Trump suggested in a Fox News interview this week that federal aid to California could be withheld over state efforts to protect the Delta smelt, a small fish that has become a fixation of Trump’s and even the subject of a Day One memorandum. The directive, which calls for “putting people over fish,” would upend the state’s water policy.
Trump has blamed water shortages in the Los Angeles region on policies meant to preserve the endangered fish, arguing more water needs to flow from Northern California to Southern California.
“I don’t think we should give California anything until they let the water run down,” he said in the Fox News interview.
Newsom has slammed Trump’s comments about the wildfires, telling NBC News this month that Trump was “somehow connecting the delta smelt to this fire, which is inexcusable because it’s inaccurate. Also, incomprehensible to anyone that understands water policy in the state.”
Trump also indicated during the Fox News interview that he would like to see big changes at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and, without elaborating, said he would “rather see the states take care of their own problems.”
Speaking to reporters on the tarmac in Asheville on Friday, Trump explained that he believed FEMA “let the country down” and may recommend a new approach to minimize its role and let states take the lead in responding to disasters. He said he would request new aid from Congress but that “rather than going through FEMA, it will go through us.”
Trump and Newsom, who previously invited him to survey the wildfire damage, have sparred publicly since Trump’s first term in office, when California sued his administration dozens of times. Those efforts could quickly ramp up as Trump enacts a raft of hard-line immigration orders and deregulatory efforts that are at odds with the wishes of California’s Democratic leadership.
After Trump won the 2024 election, Newsom said he would again launch a legal assault on the new administration, proposing to raise a war chest of tens of millions of dollars for the fight.
Trump had previously indicated that his Friday visit to North Carolina, which was hit hard by Hurricane Helene last year, was due in part to politics, “because those people were treated very badly by Democrats.”
The destruction had been allowed to “fester” under former President Joe Biden, Trump said Friday, with cleanup that “should have been done months ago.”
Trump’s tour of the Palisades on Friday will be followed by a trip to Nevada, a state that hasn’t been hit by a major natural disaster in recent months.
Politics is also driving that visit. Trump previously said Nevada was included on his trip itinerary so he could “thank them for the vote” after he won the swing state in November.
