President Donald Trump slammed California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, both Democrats, during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday over the slow pace of rebuilding after the January wildfires in Los Angeles.
The president was responding to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, who touted his agency’s success in removing hazardous waste from the Palisades and Eaton fires in less than 30 days — months ahead of schedule.
The following exchange ensued:
Trump: As you know, we have strict federal rules having to do with the rebuilding of those houses [in Los Angeles]. And Lee was able to get the approvals done for everybody immediately. It was so fast, nobody could believe it. And the mayor and the governor still have not gotten them their approvals. And they are going to have riots out there for that reason. These are great homeowners that want to build their house and can’t get approved, because you have the mayor, Bass, who has no idea what she is doing, and you have a governor who is such a bad governor. And the people are unable to build their house. The toughest permit to get was the federal, by far, and yet he got them all in a short period of time after the fire. How long did it take?
Zeldin: Well, Mr. President, you came in, signed an executive order, and told the EPA we had less than 30 days to complete our hazardous material removal. The initial response once all of our heart rates went down a bit was just to figure out how to get it done. We got it done in less than 30 days. The Army Corps of Engineers then comes in for the debris removal. The federal government in clearing over 13,000 properties that were destroyed because of these wildfires — we have got to the point today, where property owners all across Los Angeles, they are grateful to the Trump administration, they are happy we did our part, but they are desperate to rebuild. And there is not a single green light approval that they are waiting for from the Environment Protection Agency. The EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers proudly have done our work. It is important for local officials to let these property owners build on their land. It is their property. It doesn’t belong to the mayor of Los Angeles. And they need to represent their people better. They’re ready to build.
Trump: When will they have their permits?
Zeldin: Well, here’s the problem, Mr. President: They have been ready since the moment we were done with the federal part. I was visiting a week after — I thought my first trip was going to be to Los Angeles — however, the moment I got confirmed, the vice president said, you’re going to East Palestine right away. So that actually ended up being the first visit, because the vice president is so passionate about that from the great state of Ohio. Then we went to Los Angeles from there. We’re talking about the beginning of February, where we were meeting with property owners already — they were already all set up. They had the contractors. It was the beginning of February, and they were waiting for green lights from Los Angeles to be able to go onto their properties and start rebuilding. Some of the same people who are waiting for a green light, ready with the contractors at the beginning of February, are still waiting now in the middle of August. Let these Californians rebuild.
Trump: Also, taking away some of the properties and building low income housing on those properties. They are going have problems like they have never had before. These people don’t know what they are doing. So we have — everything the federal government has to do was done long ago. I went to a town hall with Lee but we were there and the mayor was saying it would take two years, maybe three years to get this approved. I said, no, no, not two years, two days. They should have it in two days. I toured the site and met 100 homeowners all standing in front of their site — a couple of days after the fire. And they were ready to go right then. They wanted to just build right then. And the city won’t let them do it. I don’t think it is that they won’t, I think they are incompetent, okay, to be honest with you. I think they just don’t know how to go about it. It is so badly run by Newscum and Mayor Bass. Mayor Bass — she was in africa during the fire. She knew the fire was starting to rage, and she decided to take a trip to Africa. These people, they are just bad. You know, you talk about Make America Great Again, they could never make America great again. But that we are doing that.
Trump also slammed California and Los Angeles over the lack of water during the wildfires.
“They shouldn’t have lost 25,000 houses,” Trump said. “The water was turned off from the Pacific Northwest … they had no water in the fire hydrants.”
The issue of water supply from northern California (and the Pacific Northwest) is only tangentially connected to the water problems in the Los Angeles wildfires.
But the president was correct that local firefighters lacked water in hydrants both the Palisades and Eaton Fires — partly because the water systems were simply overwhelmed by demand, and partly because a 117-million gallon reservoir atop Pacific Palisades had been left empty by local authorities.
Trump expanded on his criticism of California for prioritizing environmental uses of water over agricultural and municipal uses. “They send it all into the Pacific Ocean, trying to protect a certain little fish,” referring to the Delta smelt, which is endangered.
(Environmentalists claim the fish is threatened by the increasing salinity of the California delta; farming communities claim it is threatened by invasive predators, not water supply or salinity.)
Trump claimed credit for ordering the release of water from federal dams. “I’m telling Gavin Newscum by this conversation right now — turn the rest of the water on,” he said.
Later Thursday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was set to mark the last lot to be cleared in Pacific Palisades, where it originally expected to clear thousands of lots in eighteen months, but finished in less than eight.
As Trump noted, federal agencies — specifically the EPA, the Army Corps, and the Small Business Administration — have generally been credited by residents with moving quickly to help.
State and local authorities, however, have been slow and generally ineffective.
Trump also touted his use of the National Guard and the Marines to stop rioting in L.A. in June against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other law enforcement agencies and public buildings, saying that his efforts had helped save the Olympics, which are set to be hosted there in 2028.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Zionist Conspiracy Wants You, now available on Amazon. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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