President Donald Trump delivered remarks during a fire emergency meeting in Pacific Palisades, telling a roundtable of local officials said he “had a good talk, a very positive talk,” with California Gov. Gavin Newsom upon arriving in Los Angeles earlier Friday, adding: “We have to work together to get this really worked out.”
The president said he will sign an executive order “to open up the pumps and valves in the north,” allowing water to flow from the Pacific Northwest to the Southern California in an effort to fight fires. Experts have previously told CNN there is no connection between water battles in Northern California and hydrants running dry during the LA fires.
Trump also reflected on the devastation he witnessed first-hand, telling roundtable participants: “We flew over a few of the areas, and it is devastation — it’s incredible, it’s really an incineration, even some of the chimneys came down.” He told reporters Friday that the damage is “not even believable” during a walking tour of the Palisades neighborhood.
More on the visit: Trump and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass briefly clashed over rebuilding efforts during the roundtable Friday.
A homeowner in the room pressed Bass over the timeline from the Army Corps of Engineers allowing local residents to rebuild their homes.
At that point, the local homeowner said they wanted to clear the debris themselves to avoid further delay for rebuilding, prompting Trump to agree.
“You have emergency powers, just like I do, and I’m exercising my emergency powers, you have to exercise them also,” Trump told Bass. “I did exercise them because I —look, I mean, you have a very powerful emergency power, and you can do everything within 24 hours.”
“And if individuals want to clear out their property, they can,” Bass replied.
Newsom and Trump: With the fires still burning, the timing and the Santa Ana winds have turned the California governor into the first test case for how Democrats and others whom Trump perceives as political opponents manage relationships that tend to start with the personal and petty, wend through misinformation, and rarely evolve into more.
The Newsom-Trump dynamic is unique, and not just because the governor’s ex-wife used to be engaged to the president’s son before she was nominated to be his ambassador to Greece, or because the governor was one of Joe Biden’s last defenders and then a big booster of Kamala Harris. California has a particular hold on the national political imagination, especially for Republicans, as either a paragon of liberal values or the great example of a failed state.
