Trump Uses Los Angeles Fires to Complain About Real Estate Values
Donald Trump is promising “unlimited water” to quell the wildfires ravaging Los Angeles, but his plan isn’t exactly adding up.
In an address Thursday night, Trump put the blame for the fires—which have so far ravaged a land area larger than Manhattan—on Gavin Newsom, falsely claiming that the California governor had allowed some of the region’s fire hydrants to run dry. In actuality, the power lines generating the hydrants had been temporarily shut off by utilities in order to prevent electrical fires from sparking.
“If you notice yesterday the hydrants were empty, they didn’t have any water, many of them,” Trump said. “They said 20 percent, but now I just heard 50 percent, and now none of them have water and that fire is still raging.
“When he turned that down, I was gonna give him unlimited water. It would—it really comes down from the north, way up north, including parts of Canada,” Trump said, referring to the nation he’s mocked for several weeks as being on the precipice of becoming the country’s fifty-first state. “So much water that they wouldn’t know what to do with. Just the opposite would have happened. And that’s the reason that this happened.”
Exactly where Trump would obtain “unlimited water,” however, isn’t clear.
“And we’re going to force that upon him now, but it’s very late, because I think it’s one of the great catastrophes in the history of our nation,” Trump said.
Trump then turned his attention to the real estate value of some of Los Angeles’s mansions that succumbed to the flames, lamenting $400 million homes that no longer exist before using the occasion to take another potshot at Newsom.
“I don’t know that they ever go back, either,” Trump said, abstractly referring to upper-class Angelinos who lost their houses. “Because you know they weren’t happy with California, they weren’t happy with Gavin Newsom.”
Trump on Gavin Newsom's alleged failures: "I was gonna give him unlimited water ... we're gonna force that upon him now." pic.twitter.com/fTuQKt7cJ3
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 10, 2025
Canada, meanwhile, has been sending planes to dump water over the inferno, which so far has claimed the lives of 10 people.
“Canada is mobilizing to help fight the wildfires in southern California. Canadian water bombers are already in action. 250 firefighters are ready to deploy,” outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrote on X Thursday. “To our American neighbours: Canada’s here to help.”