LA mayor on Trump's response to wildfires: 'This is climate change' not just about forest management
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti on Sunday pushed back on President Donald Trump's frequent characterization of wildfires, like those currently ravaging the West Coast, as simply a forest management issue.
Posted — Updated"It's been very clear that years of drought, as we're seeing, whether it's too much water and too much rain in parts of our country right now, or too little," Garcetti told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union." "This is climate change and this is an administration that's put its head in the sand."
Slamming the administration as hosting "the last vestiges of the flat Earth society of this generation," Garcetti called for "real action."
"We need to reduce the carbon emissions that we have, and we need to make sure we can manage that water," he added. "This is not about just forest management or raking. Anybody who lives here in California is insulted by that, quite frankly, and (Trump) keeps perpetrating this lie."
Garcetti's comments come a day after the White House announced Trump will visit California Monday. The President mentioned the wildfires during a speech at a rally Saturday night -- after weeks of remaining largely silent on the historically devastating fires that have killed over two dozen people and burned more than 2.5 million acres in California.
Trump told rallygoers in Minden, Nevada, that the fires are about "forest management," a characterization he has repeatedly offered of such blazes that has been previously criticized as inaccurate.
Fact-checking Trump's California wildfire criticism
"It is about forest management, please remember the words, very simply, forest management, please remember, about forest management, and other things," he said, also thanking the firefighters and first responders who are reacting to the fires.
Trump has pushed the familiar refrain for years. After 2018's deadly Camp fire, Trump said that the forest floor should have been "raked out."
"They're starting again in California," Trump said at a rally in mid-August. "I said, you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests -- there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they're like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up."
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