Trump’s Blame Claims About Wildfire Response

Este artículo estará disponible en español en El Tiempo Latino. As wildfires continued to rage in Southern California, President-elect Donald Trump took to social media with several false and misleading claims casting blame on California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, and President Joe Biden. Trump claimed that Newsom had “refused to sign” a declaration that would have allowed water to flow from Northern California into the affected areas “to protect an essentially worthless fish.” But water policy experts told us there’s no connection between state water regulations or water flowing from the north and the ability to fight the fire. Trump made the inaccurate claim that there were no “firefighting planes” being used. Those aircraft were temporarily grounded the night of Jan. 7 due to very high winds, but were back in use early the next day, according to city officials. His claim that there was “no water in the fire hydrants” to fight fires is not the whole story. Local public works officials said that a lack of water pressure due to high water consumption made it difficult to get water to some fire hydrants in the higher regions of the Pacific Palisades. Trump also wrongly claimed Biden had left...