You’d hope that a president of the United States wouldn’t have a grudge against one of those states, but here we are. President Donald Trump and his administration have singled out California for condemnation in the past, and now, the president has sought to undercut them again. He suggested in a meeting at the White House that federal funding for the state to fight wildfires could be withdrawn if the disasters keep raging like they are — because that makes sense to him, somehow.
He began:
‘I go all over the country. When I meet with governors, the first thing they say is there’s no reason for forest fires like that in California. So I say to the governor, or whoever’s going to be the governor of California, you just better get your act together. We’re just not going to continue to pay the kind of money we’re paying because of fires that should never be to this extent.’
Somehow, the anonymous expertise of random governors from around the country trumps the facts of the situation and makes it the California government’s fault that wildfires have raged there this year.
In fact, it’s a nice political ploy for the president to pull, but it has little connection to reality. He has no apparent idea what’s he’s talking about.
California has faced a year of raging wildfires in connection to record setting heat, with temperatures registering well over 100 degrees like had not yet been seen in modern times that records are available for.
The University of Colorado’s Jennifer Balch put it bluntly speaking to the Los Angeles Times:
‘You’re seeing the effect of climate change.’
To Trump, though, the real global threat isn’t the rising average temperature — it’s the Democrats. Although he acknowledged that the state’s leadership could soon change — and on a practical level, it will, since current Governor Jerry Brown isn’t running for re-election — the Democratic Party is inexorably interwoven with the state’s political identity. Trump is literally blaming the Democrats for natural disasters.
He whined:
‘It’s costing our country hundreds of billions of dollars because of incompetence in California. I’m speaking now for the people of California — they don’t want to see this happen. They’re getting destroyed, and it’s hurting our budgets, it’s hurting our country, and they just better get their act together.’
Actually, he’s not in a position to speak for the vast majority of the people of California, since in 2016 he only garnered some 32 percent of the vote total there.
He speaks instead for the fringe reality disconnected climate change deniers scattered across the American political scene. Speaking recently with the Associated Press, he asserted that he has a “natural instinct for science” and “knows” that there are scientists on both sides of the question of whether or not human activity is driving climate change at all.
TV host Stephen Colbert responded in perhaps the best fashion:
‘After a year of massive storms causing untold damage, and our glaciers just shrinking in every direction, Trump… told the reporter, ‘You have scientists on both sides of the issue.’ That is true, there are scientists on both sides. On one side, all the scientists. On the other, one guy who runs a blog called RealTrueAmericanScienceEagle.jesus.’
Featured Image via YouTube screenshot
