President Donald Trump, who has blamed what he calls faulty water management for contributing to California wildfires and suggested conditioning federal recovery dollars on changes in state political policies, toured the fire-ravaged Pacific Palisades Friday and vowed to "open the coffers" of the federal government and waive federal permits to expedite the rebuilding process. "I don't think you can realize how rough it is, how devastating it is until you see it," Trump said of the fire damage. "I didn't realize. I saw a lot of bad things on television, but the extent of it, the size of it. We flew over it... it is devastation. It's incredible, it's really an incineration. Even some of the chimneys came down. When you have chimneys come down you know that's pretty hot stuff and a lot of them were down."
Days after taking office for his second term, President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit Los Angeles and tour the areas damaged by the recent wildfires. The U.S. leader has been vocal about his disapproval of the way Gov. Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass handled the fire response. Earlier this week, he threatened to withhold federal disaster funds for Los Angeles.
President Trump said Friday that California must pass legislation requiring its voters to present IDs at the polls before LA gets any more federal aid to deal with its ongoing wildfires. “In California, 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,” Trump said during a stop in North Carolina before traveling West, where still-raging fires have caused at least $250 billion in damage. “And we also want them to release the water. If they release the water, they wouldn’t have a problem,” Trump said, referring to California’s management of its water supply.
