Gov. Newsom Refutes President Trump’s Inaugural Address Wildfire Claims

California Governor Gavin Newsom responded to remarks made by President Donald Trump in his inaugural address on Monday, rebutting that the Southern California wildfires are not “without a token of defense.”

Since January 7th, Los Angeles County has been devastated by several wildfires blazing in different areas of the county. This includes the Palisades Fire, which is currently at around 23,700 acres and has resulted in 10 deaths, over 105,000 evacuated, and 6,000 destroyed structures; and the Eaton Fire, which is currently over 14,100 acres and has caused 17 deaths, 100,000 evacuated, and roughly 9,300 destroyed structures. The Palisades fire is also currently at about 59% containment, with Eaton at about 87% containment.

While blame for the slow containment of the fires and the dispersal of resources to fight them has been thrown around, three figures have received the bulk of the blame: Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley, and Governor Newsom. Amongst those three, Bass has been blamed the most for mismanagement, with calls for her resignation and to be recalled.

Criticisms of Bass have included cutting $17.5 million from the LAFD  in the 2024-2025 city budget, deciding to travel abroad in January despite knowing that a major emergency could happen with high speed winds expected, minimal response to the fires on the first day, refusing to answer press questions, having promised to never travel abroad yet doing it anyway, and showing an overall general mismanagement of the fires once she returned to L.A. In the past few days, Bass has even had protestors begin to congregate outside her house.

Newsom, meanwhile, has been more polarizing. Most either blame Newsom for being unprepared for dealing with the fires. Others say he is blameless for fires that spread rapidly because of dry conditions and high winds. Newsom Opponents cite his poor response to the fires as the last straw, leading to the announcement last week that a new recall effort would be started up soon.

“Governor Gavin Newsom’s governance has been marked by a series of catastrophic failures, particularly his mismanagement of the recent wildfires, which have led to unprecedented displacement and destruction,” said Houman David Hemmati, a Saving California executive board member, last week. “Wildfires are a common and well-known issue in California. The fact that Governor Newsom has not been able to come up with any plan or prep after six years as governor and eight years as lieutenant governor shows that he is completely unprepared and lacks the compassion and will to lead California any longer.”

However, Newsom’s most vocal critic in the wildfires has been Trump.

President Donald Trump has been a longtime critic of Governor Newsom, with California’s wasted water an especially testy topic in the past. In 2020, Trump, then President in his first term, attempted to divert more of California’s water to farms, ranches and urban areas, only for Newsom to end that policy the very next day by having the state sue the U.S, Bureau of Reclamation. Shortly after the wildfires began, Trump once again brought up the topic of water usage, saying that his refusal to divert water helped worsen the wildfire situation in Southern California.

“Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way,” Trump posted on Truth Social January 8th. “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. Now the ultimate price is being paid. I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA! He is the blame for this. On top of it all, no water for fire hydrants, not firefighting planes. A true disaster!”

While Newsom refuted these claims, it highlighted the fact that Newsom and Trump were still very much at odds with each other. Since the election in November, Newsom has been attempting to “Trump-proof” the state as much as possible, while at the same time has also attempted to appease him in order to not have any conditions attached to federal wildfire recovery funds.

This all led to Monday when Trump said in his second Inaugural Address that fires have burned in Los Angeles without much of a defense.

“Our country can no longer deliver basic services in times of emergency, as recently shown by the wonderful people of North Carolina been treated so badly and other states who are still suffering from a hurricane that took place many months ago, or more recently, Los Angeles, where we are watching fires still tragically burn from weeks ago without even a token of defense,” said Trump in Washington on Monday.

Newsom almost instantly refuted this on X, posting several images of firefighters and helicopters fighting the blazes under the caption “Without a token of defense”.

This newest spat over the fires comes only days before Trump is set to go to California to see the destruction from the wildfires himself. Newsom’s office responded to that announcement on Sunday, saying that they were happy that he had accepted the Governor’s request to come and see the damage firsthand.

“We are glad to see President-elect Trump accept the Governor’s invitation to come to Los Angeles,” said the Governor’s office on Sunday. “The Governor hopes the President-elect meets directly with the Americans affected by these firestorms, sees the devastation firsthand, and joins the Governor and others in thanking the heroic firefighters and first responders who are putting their lives on the line.”

The latest back and forths between Trump and Newsom have shown that the two are still in stark opposition to each other. However, Newsom has shown to be more willing respond to criticism in recent weeks, likely because of his response and management over the wildfires in the past few weeks.

“At the beginning of the year, Newsom’s plan had been to get past the next few years without any incidents or scandals, stay in the public eye, and grow his popularity,” said LA County pollster Manny Rodriguez to the Globe Monday. “That way, when he runs for President in 2028, he’ll be in good public standing and can fall back on his accomplishments and opposition to Trump. You know, Harris just lost, giving him a sigh of relief because he wouldn’t have to delay a run until 2032. So he could retain being the favorite to run for the Democrats.

“The fires ruined all that. He’s getting blamed for it now. It hasn’t been as bad as Bass, but it is also starting to stick. So wherever there has been any sort of criticism against him, his team has pounced on it. Wherever he could look favorable, they’ve gone after it. That’s why the Governor’s team wrote that Trump accepted the Governor’s invitation to go to see the wildfire wreckage in California even though Trump never even mentioned Newsom or any kind of invitation in his speech. Or, yeah, the thing today where Trump said the fires were burning without a token of defense. Trump obviously didn’t mean it that way and had praised the efforts of the fire crews previously. But the Newsom team sure saw it differently.

“This is just day one of this too. We have around two years of Newsom and Trump being in office at the same time again. We saw what they did in 2019 and 2020. This is a good indication that it will be a lot like that again. There is no love loss here.”