President Trump on Monday continued dismissing climate change as a cause behind the raging wildfires across several West Coast states by making an absurd suggestion in his attempt to bolster his argument that lack of “forest management” is to blame for the ongoing devastation.
Shortly upon landing in McClellan Park, California ahead of a briefing on the wildfires and surveying the damage from the relentless blaze, Trump told reporters that a “lot of things were possible” when pressed on whether climate change was worsening the wildfires.
In the vein of blaming the wildfires on lack of “forest management,” the President then nonsensically claimed that trees can “explode” if they get dry “like a match stick.”
“With regard to the forest, when trees fall down, after a short period of time, about 18 months, they become very dry and like a match stick,” Trump said. “There is no more water pouring through them. They just explode. They can explode.”
After saying that “years of dried leaves” need to be cleaned up in forests because he thinks they are “fuel for a fire,” Trump claimed that leaders of “forest” nations in Europe told him forest management was the key to preventing wildfires.
“He said we have trees that are more explosive in terms of fire than they have in California, and we don’t have any problems because we manage our forests,” Trump said, without naming “the head of a major country” he referred to. “We have to do that in California.”
Trump claims that "explosive" trees are causing raging wildfires pic.twitter.com/pbC5xYA8vL
— Talking Points Memo (@TPM) September 14, 2020
During the wildfire briefing Monday afternoon, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) acknowledged the need for forest management to combat wildfires to Trump, but urged the President to recognize that climate change is real and worsens the crisis.
“We come from the perspective, humbly, where we submit the science is in and observed evidence — it’s evident that climate change is real and that is exacerbating this,” Newsom said.
After Newsom conceded that “there is an area of at least commonality on vegetation and forest management” and urged the President to respect “the difference of opinion out here” regarding climate change, Trump simply nodded and said “absolutely, appreciate that.”
Later in the briefing, the President off-handedly brushed off climate change as a real concern while California Secretary for Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot demanded that Trump “recognize the changing climate and what it means to our forests and actually work together with that science.”
In response to Crowfoot’s assertion that it’s not enough to recognize that the solution to the wildfires is only about vegetation management, Trump sarcastically replied, “it’ll start getting cooler, you just watch.”
Crowfoot told Trump that: “I wish science agreed with you,” which prompted the President to doubt that “science knows, actually.”
On climate change, Trump insists that it will "start getting cooler" and doesn’t think “science knows" pic.twitter.com/cCxWEsBotS
— Talking Points Memo (@TPM) September 14, 2020
Around the same time, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden continued his rebuke of Trump’s dismissal of climate change while speaking in Wilmington, Delaware on Monday afternoon.
While counterattacking Trump’s unfounded assertion that Biden would “abolish” the suburbs if elected president, Biden mentioned wildfires burning the suburbs in the West, floods wiping out suburban neighborhoods in the Midwest and hurricanes “imperiling suburban life” along the country’s coasts, in a warning against the dire long-term consequences of the President’s reluctance to acknowledge climate change.
“If we have four more years of Trump’s climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned in wildfires? How many suburbs will have been flooded out? How many suburbs will have been blown away in superstorms?” Biden said. “If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if more of America is ablaze?”
Joe Biden, if President Trump gets reelected: "If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more of America ablaze?" https://t.co/LN9H8pfdbC pic.twitter.com/FR5yaYbMwG
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) September 14, 2020
