President Donald Trump visited California on Friday to view the devastation from wildfires that have ripped through the Los Angeles area and continue to wreak havoc, rolling back some of the harsh rhetoric about the state that he has used in recent days.
Landing on the tarmac in Los Angeles, Trump was greeted by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, a frequent sparring partner with whom he struck a more conciliatory tone during brief remarks to reporters at the airport. A short distance away stood the remains of a fire-ravaged area that Trump now said looked like it “got hit by a bomb.”
“There can be no golden age without the Golden State,” Trump told the governor. “It’s a great state. It’s a fantastic place.”
Newsom told Trump, “We’re going to need your help.”
“You were there for us during Covid,” he said. “I don’t forget that, and I have all the expectations that we’ll be able to work together to get this speedy recovery.”
During a roundtable with lawmakers and officials after touring fire-ravaged neighborhoods, Trump said he would declare a national emergency to speed up the response to wildfires, what he called “infernos of death and destruction,” and again urged changes to the state’s water policies.
Only a few days into his second term, Trump heaped blame on the Biden administration’s wildfire response, even after then-President Joe Biden had approved a major disaster declaration for California, an executive action that increased funds and resources available for people in hard-hit areas. The president listened as one lawmaker shared a heroic account of firefighters and law enforcement mobilizing some 4,000 people in six hours.
And he briefly argued with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat who was overseas as the wildfires began to rip through her city, urging her to help expedite permits and speed up the timeline for letting people in certain areas work on clearing damage from their properties.
“They want to go to work, and they're not allowed to do it,” Trump said. He said he would put Ric Grenell, a longtime aide, former ambassador and newly named envoy for special missions, in charge.
California officials have expressed concerns over hazardous waste in areas where fires destroyed homes as specialized teams are working to remove explosive and toxic material, according to a Jan. 15 news release from Newsom’s office.
The visit was part of Trump’s first presidential trip of his second term following a week that saw the president kick-start his new government at breakneck speed. Trump has rolled out of dozens of orders and issued more than 1,500 pardons for Jan. 6 defendants, anti-abortion protesters and Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht.
On Friday, he began 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.”
At each juncture, Trump 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 were his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, and first lady Melania Trump. Filing in and out of Air Force One alongside the group was 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.”
And even as he previewed the visit earlier this week, promising “to take care of Los Angeles,” Trump soon afterward suggested in a Fox News interview 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 1 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 previously slammed Trump’s comments about the wildfires, telling NBC News on Jan. 12 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 said, without elaborating, that he would “rather see the states take care of their own problems.”
Speaking to reporters on the tarmac in Asheville on Friday, Trump said he believed FEMA “let the country down” and that he 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 criticized FEMA again during his trip to California, saying the agency is “not good anymore.”
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 Biden, Trump said Friday, with cleanup that “should have been done months ago.”
Trump’s tour of Los Angeles’ burned-out Pacific Palisades neighborhood on Friday was followed by a trip to Nevada, a state that hasn’t been hit by a major natural disaster in recent months. The president departed for Nevada shortly after touring wildfire damage and participating in the roundtable.
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.
