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Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles County officials invited President-elect Donald J. Trump into the devastation, but he has not responded publicly.
By Mike Ives
President-elect Donald J. Trump on Sunday filed a new complaint from officials on the Los Angeles wildfire-fighting rate, calling them “incompetent” and asking why the flames were still extinguished.
“The fires are still in Los Angeles,” Mr. Trump on his social truth. “Incompetent poles don’t know how to get them out. “
Trump’s comments indicated that the fires and officials’ reaction to them will likely be higher on his domestic political timetable as he faces Jan. 20. It renewed a long-running feud with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who had to make Mr. Trump politicize the fires.
Mr. Newsom told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he had invited Mr. Trump to the stop on “In the Spirit of an Open Hand, Not a Clenched Fist,” but that he had yet to win a response. The governor said taking seriously threats through the president-elect to withhold crisis aid. If he did, Newsom said, Trump would in effect be “threatening our first responders. “
California politicians have come under fire since the fires broke out Tuesday, adding questions about how local and state officials had them ready and how they grew so temporarily into massive flames.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass had to ask us if there was good enough caution about the likelihood of devastating fires, and why there was a shortage of water and firefighters in the initial response. At a news conference Thursday, she dodged a query about her. The city’s absence at the start of the fires — he was in Ghana on an official scale scheduled in the past, and he said any assessment of errors or disorder across “any body, department, individual” goes later.
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