Trump has been largely silent on the devastating Western fires
President Trump has yet to offer any public statement of support during historic wildfires spreading in the Pacific Northwest and Northern California — even though he vowed federal intervention in those states earlier this summer amid racial unrest.
Trump last weighed in the devastating fires in California in the middle of August, when another round of blazes was burning north of the Bay Area. His familiar response was to blame the state’s forest management.
“They’re starting again in California,” he said at a rally. “I said, you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests — there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up.”
He hasn’t weighed in on the more recent fires, which have spread to Washington and Oregon. He sent several tweets and retweets on Thursday morning but none about the fires.
What it’s like on the ground: Oregon’s governor has said there could be unparalleled devastation in her state, both in terms of property damage and deaths. More than 2.5 million acres have burned in California, a historic figure.
FEMA has freed up some federal funds for combatting the blazes and Trump signed a disaster declaration for California in August, but he has yet to sign one for Oregon, whose governor said she sent in the request on Wednesday night. And he’s so far remained largely silent on the spreading fires.
That is hardly the same response Trump demonstrated after protests turned violent in Portland and Seattle earlier this summer. Trump dispatched federal law enforcement to Portland to protect a federal courthouse, leading to scenes of violent clashes and accusations of federal overreach. Federal officers were also dispatched to Seattle amid protests.
In total, one person has died in the Portland unrest. So far at least seven people have died in the wildfires and more deaths are expected.
Some background: Trump has a history of dismissing wildfires and other natural disasters on the West Coast, where he does not enjoy widespread support. When he visited the site of a major fire in Butte County in 2018, he mistakenly called the town “Pleasure” instead of “Paradise.”
A former DHS official, Miles Taylor, has said Trump sought to withhold emergency money to California during previous fires.
“He told us to stop giving money to people whose houses had burned down from a wildfire because he was so rageful that people in the state of California didn’t support him and that politically it wasn’t a base for him,” Taylor said recently.
