Former president Donald Trump’s threat to withhold firefighting aid to California if he’s re-elected is drawing criticism from the president of the California Professional Firefighters union.
As three large-scale wildfires continued to burn across Southern California, Brian K. Rice, president of the California Professional Firefighters union, said Trump should be “ashamed” about comments he made regarding firefighting funds during a speech on Friday at his golf course on the cliffs of Ranchos Palos Verdes.
Trump tied the aid to the willingness of California Governor Gavin Newsom to enact Trump’s policy priorities.
“As of today, thousands of firefighters are on the front lines responding to wildfires throughout the state, and countless Californians are in harm’s way as they heed evacuation orders,” Rice wrote in a statement released late Saturday. “Nevertheless, former President Trump expressed that he would play with their lives and their homes if he doesn’t get what he wants. He would rather watch our state burn in the name of his political games, then to send help if he were to become president again.”
According to a New York Times report, Trump during his Friday news conference claimed that shifts in how the state manages its water supplies could help prevent wildfires. The allotment of California’s limited water supply, how much water should go to farmers and related efforts to protect wildlife have provoked previous battles between Trump and California leaders.
“If he doesn’t sign those papers, we won’t give him money to put out all his fires,” Trump said on Friday, referring to Newsom. “And if we don’t give him all the money to put out the fires, he’s got problems.”
Trump repeatedly referred to Newsom as “Newscum.”
The governor responded by arguing that Trump “admitted he will block emergency disaster funds to settle political vendettas.”
The subsequent statement by the firefighters union echoed those concerns.
“It is shocking that we have a presidential candidate who is threatening our public safety and doesn’t even care what the consequences are to firefighters and the public,” Rice wrote. “This has now become a serious public safety issue for our members and the public we serve.”
The California Professional Firefighters represents around 35,000 career firefighters and emergency medical service personnel.
It isn’t the first time that Trump has raised the prospect of withholding firefighting funds from the state.
In November 2018, as the Camp Fire in Northern California and the Woolsey Fire in Southern California were still raging out of control, Trump threatened to withhold federal payments to California, saying “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires” and calling the state’s forest management “so poor.”
That threat — communicated by the then-president in a series of Tweets — drew immediate condemnation from state leaders, as well as celebrities. It also drew pushback from firefighting experts, who noted that massive fires in California are usually not “forest fires” but are instead brush fires sparked and fed in dry vegetation that can be driven by the strong, often erratic, Santa Ana winds toward nearby residential areas.
