Trump Shifts Tone on California After Touring Palisades Fire Damage: “We’re Going to be With You”
President Donald Trump pledged federal aid to California and to expedite federal permits in the state as rebuilding begins after he made his first presidential trip of his second term to Los Angeles on Friday to visit the site of the Palisades fire that devastated a vast swath of the city and has left at least 28 people dead and many more missing.
Trump’s shifting tone toward California, whose leaders he has admonished over the still-burning fires and the local response, came at a press conference on Friday night after he took a helicopter tour of the Palisades area and met with local officials, including Mayor Karen Bass, and spoke with local fire officials. In addition to his statements around federal response to the carnage in California, Trump on Friday night was affable towards state Democrats, including longtime foe Gov. Gavn Newsom, who was uninvited to any meetings or parts of the president’s visit but still greeted him on the tarmac after he landed at LAX in the afternoon local time; Newsom and Trump embraced and spoke briefly at the airport before the president’s brief visit to L.A.
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“There can be no Golden Age without the Golden State,” Trump reportedly told the governor. “It’s a great state. It’s a fantastic place.”
The shift in tone toward California and its Democrat leadership, at the state level and in the city of Los Angeles, continued throughout the president’s visit.
“We’re going to be with you,” Trump said. “Your governor met us at the plane, and we had a very, very positive talk. We have to work together to get this really worked out…I saw a lot of bad things on television, but the extent of it, the side of it, we flew over it in a helicopter. And it is devastation.”
Trump spoke further of the devastation he witnessed at the press conference, mentioned his golf property nearby and acknowledged Bass and L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger by name, and of developers he has discussed rebuilding in the scorched and devastated areas. He also pledged full federal support — a sharp contrast to the quid pro quo offered earlier in the week, demanding California launch a voter ID plan and that it begin a potentially environmentally devastating movement of water from the state’s north into Southern California.
“The federal government is standing behind you. 100 percent,” Trump told the people of California in front of the gathered press, later adding, “ I’ve had so many calls from developers, and they want to come in…I would ask the local officials, because we’re going to waive just about all federal permits. We’re going to have you go very quickly, because the federal permit can take 10 years. We’re not going to do that. We don’t want to take 10 days.
Trump also said that he will declare the L.A. fires a national emergency, which will speed up the process of delivering aid and rebuilding. On Thursday, Newsom was in L.A. to sign a $2.5 billion wildfire recovery bill package into law. But federal funding for the still-burning blazes — with several new fires igniting this week — has been uncertain as Trump begins his second term with a deep disdain for California’s politics and leaders.
“By doing that, I can give you immediate permits,” Trump said. “I’d ask that the local permitting process be the same. Some of the people were saying they’re going to have to, they’re going to be forced to wait 18 months for their permits. And I don’t think you’re going to do that. I can’t imagine that. So they are literally in a position right now. They’d like to start tonight.”
First Lady Melania Trump joined Trump on the trip, which lasted under just a handful of hours. They flew out to Las Vegas following the visit, which is being book-ended with stops in hurricane-damaged North Carolina. Trump spoke with reporters before departing the White House on Friday for North Carolina, saying that the Los Angeles fires “could have been put out,” but “they still haven’t for whatever reason.”
“It would be fine if they turned the water on,” Trump said later after landing in North Carolina. “I want to see the water be released and come down into Los Angeles and throughout the state.”
The president had also repeated his earlier threat where he suggested withholding federal disaster relief funds to California because of his opposing views on the state’s water policies and voter ID laws; it is a frequently mentioned, contentious topic for Trump. On Wednesday, he told Fox News host Sean Hannity that Gov. Newsom “can release the water that comes from the north” to help put out the fires and added that the U.S. government shouldn’t “give California anything” until its policy reflects this plan. He touched on his gripe with the state’s voter ID laws, too, while speaking on Fox News.
“I have a condition. In California, we want them to have voter ID so the people have a voice, because right now, the people don’t have a voice because you don’t know who’s voting, and it’s very corrupt,” he told Hannity. “If they released the water when I told them to, because I told them to do it seven years ago, if they would’ve done it, you wouldn’t have had the problem.”
Trump said that Newsom “refused to sign the water restoration declaration,” which would allow water from Northern California to flow down into Los Angeles. The plan to move water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta downstate was nixed after environmental groups opposed it because of its potential impact on endangered salmon and smelt.
Newsom has pushed back on the notion that this is an easy fix he chooses not to utilize. On Friday, he said that he hopes to brief Trump on the still-burning fire situation and clear up his misconceptions about California water policy.
“Maybe the president just doesn’t know that there’s not a spigot that can be turned to solve all the water problems that he alleges exist, that don’t exist, as it relates to the state water system here in Southern California,” Newsom said of those claims.
Last week, Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that three actors who have supported him politically — Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone, and Jon Voight — would be his eyes and ears in Hollywood.
“It will again be, like The United States of America itself, The Golden Age of Hollywood!” he wrote in the post, referring to the trio as special envoys.
This story was originally published Jan. 24 at 11:27 a.m.
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