The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Puts Blame For Wildfires On Newsom's Shoulders

Episode Date: January 13, 2025

The Los Angeles area has been devastated by wildfires over the past week. As officials work to get the two biggest fires contained, president-elect Trump blames Governor Gavin Newsom for the disaster's scale. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, national correspondent Kirk Siegler, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger, and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Jacqueline Sullivan from Winter Park, Florida currently in line at Blue Springs State Park in Orange City waiting to see these 600 or so manatees that have come to the park to swim in the 72 degree natural springs during a rare Florida cold snap This podcast was recorded at 107 p.m. On Monday the 13th of January things may have changed by the time you hear this But hopefully I will have seen some manatees by then. Okay, enjoy the show. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"]

Aw, manatees. I would think, is our manatees one of your favorites, Tam? They're on the list. They're not at the very top. I have no insults for manatees, so that means they're doing pretty well in the animal world. I've kayaked with manatees. They're pretty cool.

Yeah. Yeah. They're slow. They're cool. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And joining us today is NPR national correspondent Kirk Siegler. Hey, Kirk. Hey, guys. The Los Angeles area has been devastated by wildfires over the past week with the two largest ones far from fully contained and forecasters are warning again that there are dangerous Santa Ana winds on the way. Kirk, let's start with the big picture. You have been in California covering these

fires. What's the status of them now? Well, I think with your disclaimer that we play up at the top there, I think we're safe. It's not going to get any better, at least anytime soon. It's a very active fire situation and still very active unfolding disaster. I mean, authorities are still going through in places that are safe enough to go through combing through the area, looking for, you know, not survivors at this point, but any human remains left in the fire zones. It is extraordinary, but also I would say, not necessarily unexpected. Unfortunately, California is in another extreme drought. California is

almost constantly in drought just because of its climate in particular, but the rainy season in Southern California has not shown up yet, and they're coming off of two years of extraordinarily wet conditions because we're kind of in this climate whiplash, seesaw back and forth of extremes that are just getting even more extreme with climate change. So you've got all this vegetation built up and then you get winds like that and you've got infrastructure there. You've got whole cities, of course. Los Angeles is a city built out into wild lands that are prone to burn. And so it's just these conditions that are just making things very, very dangerous at the moment. I'm hoping you can take us back to last week and help explain how do these fires start?

How did they get so bad? You know, the investigation into the actual cause of the fires will take months. But of course, there's already some theories, if not speculation, that it's possible down power lines. I mean, we've seen this story before from Hawaii to California to Colorado in winds like that. I think there will be a lot of scrutiny and focus on what was de-energized in the grid.

You know, they knew this extraordinary wind event was coming. Like that's not unheard of and it's certainly quite common for the winter in California. You get these desert winds blowing off from the Mojave. They're very dry and the humidity goes way down. But in my experience covering wildfires, particularly in California, and you're hearing local authorities talk about this if you cut through some of the politics that's going on, these are fires you are not going to stop. The conditions are so dangerous that it's dangerous even to put firefighters in the way. And it's actually, you know, it's very much a tragedy. But if the death toll stays relatively low, you know, that's remarkable. I mean, certainly it's very, very sad, but it possibly could have

been a lot worse. There's thinking in the wildland fire world Like why are we trying to put out these fires that you say are you know? neighborhoods whole cities built out into the wild lands that are you know full of brush and they've done mitigation work But you know, we don't try to stop a hurricane. So why are we trying to stop wildfires? That's what wildfire firefighters are now increasingly saying because Because these conditions are such that you're just not going to stop them, let alone even slow them. I mean, over the period of the last few days being out there, they haven't even been able until recently to attack these fires from the air. I think if people could figure out a way to stop hurricanes, they would try. I mean,

you know, I think that there's clearly something going on here in with the politics versus, you know, the reality. You know, there's very quick finger pointing that we've seen from President-elect Trump. A lot of times people will look at what he has to say and say, well, that's just politics. I do wonder if there's a question about what could have been done. Are there preparations that have been made sufficiently as the country and the world are going to be dealing, frankly, with climate change that's increasingly making the climate worse, making wildfires worse, making hurricanes worse?

And you have one party that doesn't want to talk about that with Republicans and want to talk about things like hardening homes and, you know, getting rid of brush, all of these things, to some extent, there could be truth in a lot of what either side says, but there isn't a lot of bridging the gap on this right now. Right. I mean, we've actually seen throughout the Biden administration, the narrative switch more to wildfires or all climate change versus during the previous Trump administration, it was, well, we need to do more brush clearing and logging. When in reality, I think the experts will tell you you need to do both.

It's about both. California does have, compared to the rest of the West, and Los Angeles in particular, does have some of the most restrictive building codes and brush clearance ordinances and rules about what you can and cannot have around your homes. You're talking about, Domenico, you're talking about finger pointing. There's already been some of that within City Hall, even in Los Angeles, with some budget cuts to the fire department and the LA Fire Chief saying that we haven't had enough money to go around and enforce those codes. So that's another big thing that I think we'll want to be tracking in the weeks and months

to come as we figure out, well, what could have, if anything, been done to at least make this not so bad. Are there lessons to be learned about the specifics of this disaster? I think there were some preemptive power shutoffs, whether or not there were enough or they were in the right areas. Can you just explain why cutting off the power lines, cutting off the power would potentially prevent fires in this instance? Well, when you consider that a lot of the Western US and frankly the US has aging infrastructure and aging power lines in some places. We saw this in Paradise, California in 2018. When those lines are hot and active and you get winds like we saw last week and something topples and then these lines are built around a lot of dry brush.

I would also point out Maui in Lahaina. The power lines are around overgrown brush. so as soon as that live wire hits brush, something as simple as that can start a small flame that turns into a deadly inferno. The issue is when you shut off the power, it's sort of a damned if you do damned if you don't perspective from the utilities because they catch a lot of flak when they do shut it off, and especially if they don't do adequate warning in some people's minds because you're then cutting off critical electricity supplies to hospitals, nursing homes, emergency facilities, infrastructure. But then on the other hand, if you don't preemptively shut the power off, you could get a blaze that turns into a huge wildfire that you just can't stop, right? These are not like the fires that we used to cover even in the beginnings of our careers. These are urban wildfires.

This is the second largest city in the US. It's just really hard to imagine trying to stop something like this. All right. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment. And we're back and we've really quickly seen this disaster become politicized. President-elect Trump blamed Governor Gavin Newsom for the poor response and called other officials incompetent. He blamed state water policy and fire prevention policy. How should we think about all of this criticism? Well, we've come a long way since Hurricane Ian and President Biden and Ron DeSantis working

together two years ago and putting what was a rivalry really aside. DeSantis was highly critical of Biden's cultural and social policies. Biden certainly didn't agree with DeSantis on a lot of things, but they were able to put that aside for disaster recovery when it came to the hurricane there in Florida. And we've just seen that devolve in over the last two years where disaster funding has become political. We're seeing people on Capitol Hill saying that they want to offset any disaster aid with other spending cuts.

I think that the climate right now on all of that is just, it's at a fever pitch, especially with President-elect Trump about to take office. And we're not sure how this Republican House is going to function or operate or deal with things like disaster aid and disaster funding, which used to be the low-hanging fruit of what they could get passed. Kirk, there has been a lot of focus from Trump and some of his allies on why the fire hydrants ran dry in the early hours of this fight. Do you have answers to what really went wrong? Kirk O'Rourke We don't. Governor Newsom has called for an investigation. There's been

a lot of focus on that reservoir in Pacific Palisades run by Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, LADWP, why it was offline. But it's not clear again that that may have stopped some of the destruction and devastation in the neighborhoods in West LA. The governor is calling for the investigation. The governor was also on Meet the Press yesterday, inviting President-elect Trump to come to California to see it for himself. I think it has been remarkable, but maybe not surprising, and also sad that this is so politicized so quickly. I don't know if it has something to do also with Governor Newsom's ongoing presidential

ambitions down the road, and that's why there's quick finger pointing. But I will also be interested to see some of the more local finger pointing going on at City Hall, and whether or not Karen Bass, the former Congresswoman who was actually out of the country at the time and then did fly back from Ghana when these fires ignited, I think there's going to be a lot of scrutiny on her, and there may be a political fallout on her. Yeah, Republicans love to hold out California as everything that is wrong with how to govern, right? And Democrats will often point to California as being at the tip of the spear of how to govern properly. And you know, so when you have a wildfire or a disaster, it's very easy for Trump and Republicans to be able to point the fingers at democratic

governance. And then especially when you have that local infighting about who could have done what when, it's certainly going to add fuel to their criticisms, certainly nationally. This idea about the water hydrants running dry, I mean, the reporting that we've seen is that there was very high demand and there would be almost no city in the world that could have dealt with putting out fires in almost every neighborhood over such a long stretch. But again, when it comes to this local governance of managing emergencies like this versus planning in a very big way over the

next 10, 50, 100 years for climate change is where the real tension is going to be. Yeah, and I think Kirk, one thing that you said before that this was an urban wildfire. It was not out in the wildlands. It was hundreds of house fires simultaneously happening. And in some cases the houses themselves create the fuel for the fire that we see in these tragedies. We have to remember also California, Southern California in particular is entering another extreme drought period. So you know the water availability is just not there en masse. I was in particular interested in Republicans Trump included pointing out or trying to

Tie the water situation and the availability of water in the hydrants to an ongoing political fight That's mostly unrelated over an endangered species way up in the Sacramento Delta related over an endangered species way up in the Sacramento Delta that has limited water deliveries to the south, to farms, and to cities in Southern California. Somehow Trump was trying to say that this was related to why they couldn't get water on the fire. Well, they couldn't get water on the fire because there wasn't enough pressure in the hydrants, but also you just couldn't safely fly over the fire to drop water on it at the time with those winds. But so that gets at something that I think we should talk about because there's misinformation, conspiracy theories, blaming people's ideology, and that has now become a day one response

to natural disasters, at least on social media. And I'm wondering if that complicates things for people on the ground. Certainly makes it harder to report on, and definitely if you're living in it and having to evacuate. I can't tell you how many times in the last few days people have approached me in evacuation centers or even sometimes within the fires.

And we'll like, do you know what's going on? Because I don't really understand, I know, I'm hearing five different things from five different outlets and I don't know what to believe. You know, for his part, Governor Newsom did set up some sort of, you know, anti disinformation, you know, outlet. I don't know that that's going to go anywhere, but it is a favorite on, you know, even that could be politicized. It's a favorite on the left, right, to talk about disinformation. So it just feels even more chaotic. And I think it might be a product of the sort of moment we're in in America right now. Yeah, well, regardless of the, you know, local politics, the misinformation, the

national politics on this are are notable, but there's a really big important function that the federal government plays, which is just basically giving out money for recovery. And that's a big piece here. And President Biden, we know, has approved a major disaster declaration in California. He's making federal funding available for those affected in LA. Tam, is that going to extend into Trump's term or is he talking about potentially clawing that back? Yeah, it's a remarkable thing actually. President Biden is giving a 100% match to the state for these recovery efforts in the first 180 days. And I actually asked the FEMA director about this. At the time, he had about 10 days left and he was guaranteeing this 100% coverage

for 180 days. And she said that President Biden is within his powers to do this under statute and so he's doing it. I think there is a question about whether President Trump will try to find a way to claw it back, but also there's a question of whether he would even want to. He has not vocalized that. So I think although I was asking about it, it may be a little bit premature to know the answer. We could see this as a guys as a portent potentially into what's to come. If we look back to 2020 a story that I covered a lot, Then President Trump held up a presidential disaster declaration in Washington state over wildfires that were destructive and burned in farm country there over an apparent

political dispute with Governor Jay Inslee of Washington state. That was held up for months and that held up recovery and the rebuilding efforts of very struggling economically towns in counties in Washington state that were deep red. So it was actually quite an ongoing situation to watch. Eventually, there was a declaration declared, but I can't help but watch some of this and the politicking going on around this and the 100% kind of unprecedented reimbursement to California in the late days of the Biden administration. You can't help but wonder like what's going to happen with the president elect Trump.

All right. Well, we're going to leave it there for today. Kirk, thank you so much for bringing your reporting to the pod. You're welcome. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Mazzanara, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.