By President Donald Trump is set to visit California on Friday and view the devastation from wildfires that have ripped through the Los Angeles area and continue to wreak havoc.
It will be Trump’s first presidential trip since his return to office, and it will be to a state with Democratic leaders he has repeatedly blamed for persistent blazes, arguing that wildlife protections have impeded access to water.
Speaking to reporters before departing the White House on Friday, Trump said the fires “could have been put out,” but “they still haven’t for whatever reason.”
“It would be fine if they turned the water on,” Trump said.
Previewing the visit earlier this week, he promised, “We’re going to take care of Los Angeles.” Trump’s tour of the Palisades will be bookended by stops in North Carolina, where he will meet with families still reeling from the devastation of Hurricane Helene, and Nevada.
Trump said this week that he didn’t know whether he would meet with Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, while he is on the ground in California. Newsom told KNBC Thursday that he hadn’t yet spoken with Trump or the White House but that he was planning to be on the tarmac when Trump arrives.
Trump spent much of an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Wednesday railing against a response that he said makes the country look “helpless” and “weak.”
He suggested 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.
Trump also indicated 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.”
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.
On Friday, Trump will also visit North Carolina, which was hit hard when Hurricane Helene passed through it months ago. Trump said that trip 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.”
Politics is also driving Trump’s visit to Nevada, a state that hasn’t been hit by a major natural disaster in recent months. Trump said it was included on Friday’s itinerary so he could “thank them for the vote” after he won the swing state in November.
