President – and Republicans – have tied funds to policy agendas as Gavin Newsom fights for more recovery funds. Days into his new administration, Donald Trump is locked in a wrestling match with a familiar foe, the California governor, Gavin Newsom. And despite the high stakes in the wake of the wildfires that have devastated Los Angeles, neither man is showing any sign of backing down.
Where many presidents in the past, regardless of party, have offered unconditional support and unlocked large sums of federal aid to help neighborhoods devastated by the fires to recover and rebuild, Trump appears unable to forget that he is a Republican and Newsom the outspoken Democratic leader of the most populous state in the union.
From the moment the fires erupted on 7 January, Trump hasn’t stopped attacking Newsom, accusing him of mismanaging forestry and water policy in his state and threatening conditions on any future federal aid to make him change course. In his first interview on Fox News on Wednesday since taking office, Trump lumped Newsom in with the “radical left”, said he looked “like an idiot” on immigration policy and repeated his much-aired, inaccurate accusation that the main reason the fires in Los Angeles raged so fiercely was because firefighters had no access to water.
“It looked like our country was just helpless,” Trump told Sean Hannity from the Oval Office. “We look so weak.”. Newsom has not been shy about punching back, pointing out that the reservoirs in southern California were full when the fires erupted and that no amount of water could have contained brush fires whipped by 100mph winds.
