Trump’s track record of disaster misinformation as he casts blame over California wildfires

(WASHINGTON) — As deadly wildfires burn through Southern California, President-elect Donald Trump has spent the week attacking Democratic officials and continuing a pattern of spreading misinformation about natural disasters.

“I think that Gavin is largely incompetent, and I think the mayor is largely incompetent, and probably both of them are just stone-cold incompetent,” Trump said on Thursday night while hosting Republican governors at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.

Since the fires broke out, Trump has pointed fingers at Gov. Gavin Newsom and President Joe Biden, spreading false claims about California’s water policy and federal assistance.

For example, Trump blamed Biden as he falsely claimed that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had “no money” to help California despite Congress recently passing a disaster relief supplemental totaling $29 billion.

The president-elect also pushed exaggerated claims as he accused Newsom of refusing to sign a “water restoration declaration,” saying he instead diverted water resources in order to protect the endangered Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta’s smelt fish.

“He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

While there are regulations that limit the amount of water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to protect the species, the governor’s office said there was no such declaration, calling the accusation “pure fiction.”

Biden and other emergency officials have also rejected Trump’s claims, maintaining the fire was caused by fierce winds and extremely dry conditions and that the initial water shortage occurred due to power being shut off in order to avoid sparking additional fires.

Still, Trump has long pushed these claims, suggesting while on the campaign trail that he’d withhold aid from California if Newsom didn’t reinstate Trump’s policies.

“The water coming here is dead. And Gavin Newsom is going to sign those papers, and if he doesn’t sign those papers, we won’t give him money to put out all his fires, and we don’t give him the money to put out his fires. He’s got problems,” Trump said at a press conference at his Los Angeles golf course in September.

After a closed-door meeting with Senate Republicans at the Capitol on Wednesday, Trump continued to criticize Newsom’s handling of the pandemic while ultimately asserting that the two would need to work together.

“So, what’s happened is a tragedy, and the governor has not done a good job,” Trump told ABC News Senior Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott.

“With that being said, I got along well with him — when he was governor, we worked together very well, and we would work together,” Trump said. “I guess it looks like we’re going to be the one having to rebuild it.”

It isn’t the first time Trump has gone after emergency officials in the wake of disasters. When hurricanes caused devastation in parts of Georgia and North Carolina last year, Trump quickly pivoted his campaign schedule to focus on those areas.

During those visits, Trump repeatedly spread misinformation about FEMA’s response, incorrectly casting blame on federal officials in the Biden administration.

“They got hit with a very bad hurricane, especially North Carolina and parts of Georgia. But North Carolina really got hit. I’ll tell you what, those people should never vote for a Democrat, because they held back aid,” Trump claimed in an October interview.

Local and federal officials warned Trump about how his politically motivated rhetoric could be causing harm as the areas hit attempted to rebuild; however, the president-elect often refused to backtrack.

While visiting Asheville, North Carolina, Trump refused to denounce the violence against FEMA workers after being asked about threats made against the workers.

“I think you have to let people know how they’re doing,” he said. “If they were doing a great job, I think we should say that, too, because I think they should be rewarded. But if they’re not doing — does that mean that if they’re doing a poor job, we’re supposed to not say it?”

As he attacked his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump politicized the events even more, scheduling a hurricane visit alongside Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, whom he had intensely criticized up until that point for his refusal to give in to Trump’s demands around the 2020 election.

In the battleground state of Georgia, Trump’s tune changed: “Your governor is doing a fantastic job, I will tell you that, and we’re all with them and with everybody.”

Now, during his transition, Trump has used his social media platform to share his unfiltered thoughts, often responding to disasters in short, rapid-fire statements, sometimes with misleading context, before all the information has been uncovered.

For example, in the hours after a driver plowed into a crowd on New Orleans’ Bourbon Street, Trump responded online by saying, “The criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country,” falsely implying that the suspect was an immigrant who had crossed into the United States illegally.

The suspect, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was actually a U.S. Army veteran who was born in the U.S. and lived in Houston.

Even while in office, Trump received pushback at times for peddling misinformation.

For example, when he claimed that Alabama was in the path of Hurricane Dorian in 2019, leading the National Weather Service to issue a public service announcement refuting Trump’s claims. Then, that same year, when senators first failed to pass disaster relief aid to hurricane victims in Puerto Rico, Trump blamed local leaders as he spread false claims about the amount of assistance they had already been given.

“The people of Puerto Rico are GREAT, but the politicians are incompetent or corrupt,” Trump posted at the time.

Despite this pattern, Republican governors still came to Trump’s defense on Thursday night, touting his leadership skills as president during disasters.

“You could criticize the president-elect, but I think you also have to hold these other people accountable,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters at Mar-a-Lago.

“I worked well with Biden during his time at natural disasters, but I work well with Donald Trump, so I’m very confident as a state that knows we face these that a Trump administration is going to be very strong and is going to be there for the people, regardless of party,” he added.