At the White House, President Donald Trump was asked by a reporter: “Will your recent dust-ups with Governor Newsom impact additional wildfire relief out there? They’ve requested 40 billion.”
The President of the United States replied, “Yeah, maybe,” and said of California Governor Gavin Newsom, “The man’s incompetent. He shouldn’t have fires like that.”
[Note: Boston University’s Earth and Environment Professor David Demeritt says the reason why Los Angeles fires spread so fast and ferociously “depends partly on whether you look at the immediate proximate cause (high ‘Santa Ana winds’ and drought) or longer-term trends in ecology, fire suppression, and land use.”]
Trump added: “You know, hatred is never a good thing in politics. When you don’t like somebody, you don’t respect somebody, it’s harder for that person to get money.”
Sucking up to the President should not be a requirement for him to do the right thing for the American people.
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) June 18, 2025
These are families who’ve lost their homes, their belongings — the irreplaceable pieces of a life built over decades, reduced to ash.
Only a truly disturbed person… https://t.co/hfWmQy3Wbl
Newsom requested nearly $40 billion in federal aid to help communities recover from recent wildfires in California. The request, sent to Congress, included $16.8 billion in fire response costs, debris removal, and the repair of roads, bridges, public buildings and utilities.
According to The Washington Post, the request “also accounts for some of the hazard mitigation money to help prevent the next disaster. All of that funding that would be coordinated through the Federal Emergency Management Agency” (FEMA), which President Trump said he plans to phase out this year.
Newsom responded to Trump’s comments by writing: “Sucking up to the President should not be a requirement for him to do the right thing for the American people. These are families who’ve lost their homes, their belongings — the irreplaceable pieces of a life built over decades, reduced to ash. Only a truly disturbed person would threaten to withhold aid from victims because they don’t like someone.”
.jpg){kind=link}