CNN
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Walls of fire devastated neighborhoods and forced tens of thousands of residents to flee to save their lives. But when a storm-triggered disaster charred large parts of Los Angeles, Donald Trump saw an opportunity.

The president-elect responded to six massive riots by resuming his long-running feud with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, taking an early swipe at a Democratic governor and a state that would likely prove to be a major challenger to his plans for a second term.

Trump and Newsom have had bitter disputes in the past, including on fire safety, environmental policy, climate change, green vehicles and immigration.

And the new president wasted no time in blaming the simultaneous wildfires in the Los Angeles area, which have killed at least five people so far.

Trump criticized “the gross incompetence and mismanagement of the Biden/Newscum duo” in a post on his Truth Social network. He claimed that California’s environmental policies, which divert freshwater to protect wetlands and wildlife, were responsible for the fire hydrants drying up. “I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to flow into CALIFORNIA! He is to blame for this,” Trump wrote in a flurry of social media posts, later calling for Newsom to resign.

In Trump’s misinformation game, it doesn’t matter whether it’s true that Newsom is responsible for diverting water to protect the Delta smelt — “a worthless fish” in Trump’s words — and that Angelenos’ homes have been burned as a result. The president-elect simply needs enough people to believe this might be the case to inflict political damage on the governor, who is one of the most prominent Democrats in the country and a possible 2028 presidential candidate.

California is also a perfect destination as a liberal state that voted for Vice President Kamala Harris in last year’s election. The conceit of a state and city pursuing self-destructive environmental policies fits perfectly with Trump’s narrative that liberal governance in blue states and cities leads to chaos, crime and misery.

“This is not a government. I can’t wait until January 20th!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

There will be legitimate questions about the status of California and Los Angeles’ preparations for the fires. Newsom and city officials will be held accountable for any failures — like many politicians who are tested in the crucible of natural disasters. But in such dire situations, the blame is usually placed on the crisis subsiding.

Newsom told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that they “can’t even respond” to Trump’s attacks. “People are literally on the run, people have lost their lives, children have lost their schools, families have been completely torn apart, churches have burned down – this guy wanted to politicize that.”

“I have a lot of thoughts about what I want to say, and I’m not going to do that,” the governor added.

In this particular case, Trump’s complaints that the freshwater issue was responsible for the difficulty in responding appeared, at best, to be a vast oversimplification of the complex factors at play.

But after a meeting with Republican senators on Thursday, the president-elect doubled down on his opinion.

“This is a true tragedy and a mistake by the governor,” Trump told reporters. “They have no water. They have millions and millions of gallons of water and they send it into the Pacific.”

But water officials said that while fire hydrants in Pacific Palisades were running dry early Wednesday, there was enough water in Southern California to fight the fires. The logistics of getting enough of them to Pacific Palisades — and given the speed required by overwhelmed firefighters to bring the fires under control — were prohibitive.

Still, Trump’s attacks were a characteristic attempt to politicize a natural disaster while it was still unfolding. Newsom spokesman Anthony York told CNN: “We’re focused on protecting lives and fighting these fires – not politics.”

When a disaster strikes, a national leader’s standard practice is to bury the party’s grievances, unite behind Americans in need, and commit to standing by victims for as long as necessary.

Even Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has often clashed with Newsom and California in the past — particularly over the pandemic lockdowns — offered prayers and help to California. “When disaster strikes, we must come together to help our fellow Americans in any way we can,” DeSantis wrote on X.

Newsom praised his fellow Democrat, President Joe Biden, for quickly bringing the federal government’s power to bear as the infernos gained strength with a major disaster declaration.

“It is impossible for me to express the level of appreciation and cooperation we have received in this administration from the White House,” Newsom said as he stood next to the president in Santa Monica on Wednesday. “On behalf of all of us, Mr. President, thank you for being here.”

Biden said the federal government was prepared to do “anything and everything” to contain the fires and listed several military deployments to combat the disaster. However, he ended the media exposure on a harrowing note, marking the arrival of a new family member after his granddaughter Naomi gave birth at an area hospital. “The good news is that as of today I am a great-grandfather,” he said.

The White House announced late Wednesday that Biden will no longer travel to Rome, Italy, as planned this week, canceling the trip to monitor the wildfires in the final days of his presidency.

Trump’s attacks on Biden and Newsom are his latest attempt to portray the outgoing administration as incompetent, apparently to flatter his new White House team by comparison.

His comments suggest his second term, which begins in 11 days, will be as unorthodox and turbulent as his first, punctuated even in times of crisis by outbursts of anger on social media against his opponents.

Trump and Newsom have a deeply antagonistic relationship, exacerbated by their starkly different ideologies and the fact that powerful California has the power to thwart some of the president-elect’s policy priorities.

Trump is also fixated on forest management and fire prevention, including his view that Democratic jurisdictions do an inadequate job of clearing fallen leaves, which he says is responsible for many fires.

“California Governor @GavinNewsom has done a terrible job of forest management,” Trump wrote in November 2019 on Twitter at the time. “I told him from the first day we met that he still has to ‘clean up’ his forest floors” from what his bosses, the environmentalists, want him to do. Also have to do burns and cut fire stoppers…..”

Trump’s tweet during a previous wildfire crisis in California seemed incongruous at the time, as it followed praise from Newsom for his efforts to help his state.

Environmentalists argue that the real problem making California so vulnerable to worsening wildfires is something Trump refuses to acknowledge exists: climate change. In the current crisis, parched soil and unusual heat made Los Angeles a powder keg, extremely vulnerable to the added catalyst of raging, high winds that spread fires.

During another wildfire crisis in California, as millions of acres burned in 2020, Trump rejected a plea from Wade Crowfoot, the state’s natural resources secretary, to recognize the effects of global warming.

“It’s slowly getting cooler. Just watch,” Trump said. When Crowfoot asked him to look at the science, he added, “I don’t think science actually knows that.”

Trump insisted on Capitol Hill on Wednesday that he “got along well” with Newsom despite their differences.

But their renewed alienation could pose a problem for California, as the country may soon seek hundreds of millions of dollars in federal disaster aid from the Republican-controlled White House and Congress.

“It looks like we’re going to be the ones who have to rebuild it,” Trump said after meeting senators.

And Trump and Newsom won’t just disagree over fires. The governor has already pledged to intervene if Trump wants to eliminate tax credits for electric vehicles. And his state is expected to be at the forefront of legal efforts to thwart Trump administration policies on many issues, including immigration and reproductive rights.

There are many previous examples of Trump politicizing national crises.

In 2017, he was criticized for his handling of Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico and killed nearly 3,000 people. There is blame to be assigned when relief efforts fail, and the then-president was not solely responsible for the missteps in the federal and local response. But he repeatedly blamed local leaders and complained about the scale of help needed, falsely claiming the operation was an “incredible, unsung success.”

And Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic included several examples of him trying to preserve his political fortunes, which ironically helped seal his defeat in the 2020 election.

Recently, Trump seized on the terrorist attack that killed 14 people in New Orleans on January 1, falsely suggesting on social media that the suspect was an undocumented migrant who had recently crossed the southern border.

It was a reminder that in times of national tension, the president-elect’s first response was sometimes to seek political gain rather than promote unity and fact-based responses.