Wildfires being tamed, but Trump’s rhetoric still burning out of control

The air has finally cleared a bit in Southern Nevada as crews gain the upper hand on massive wildfires burning across central and Southern California. In Northern Nevada, the horrific Davis Fire is 92% controlled and the threat to residents of the greater Reno / Carson City region is all but contained.

There are no words to express our gratitude to the brave men and women who risk their lives and their health to protect our homes and property. However, we can say with absolute certainty that there are words that should not be uttered in the aftermath of a destructive wildfire, including those spoken last week by GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump.

During a news conference at the Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., Trump demonstrated that although the immediate threat posed by wildfires may have diminished, the threat of ignorant politicians using victims of natural disasters as pawns for political gamesmanship is as prevalent as ever.

In a shameless attempt to show his strength in standing up to California Gov. Gavin Newsom – a Democrat who has made a sport of getting under Trump’s skin – Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from wildfire victims if more water wasn’t diverted to farmers in Southern California.

The collective response to Trump’s comments from the firefighters who put their lives on the line to protect people and property was swift.

“Former President Trump should be ashamed for threatening to withhold federal firefighting aid from California should he be elected,” said California Professional Firefighters president Brian K. Rice in a statement.

“As of today, thousands of firefighters are on the front lines responding to wildfires throughout the state, and countless Californians are in harm’s way as they heed evacuation orders,” Rice wrote. “Nevertheless, former President Trump expressed that he would play with their lives and their homes if he doesn’t get what he wants.”

“(Trump’s) rhetoric is dangerous, his ideas on public safety are dangerous, and his ignorant rhetoric has grown exponentially. It is a disgrace to our great nation and to every Californian that this man has a platform to threaten our livelihoods, safety, families and our state,” Rice wrote.

We feel confident that Rice’s sentiments are shared by forest firefighters across the country, including here in Nevada, who regularly travel across state lines and go where they are needed to combat the threat of wildfires.

As Nevadans well know, water policy in the West is a complicated web of interstate compacts, international treaties, seniority systems and state and federal legislation and regulation. California’s water policy is particularly complicated as thousands of miles of pipes and canals crisscross the state and move hundreds of millions of gallons of water each day. It is made even more complicated now because thousands of wells have started failing in California because of climate change.

The debate between residents, farmers, industrialists, environmentalists and other interest groups over how best to move the water and whose water needs are most pressing has raged for more than a century and has bested far more thoughtful leaders than Trump.

The growing threat of wildfires is also complicated, as they are the product of environmental and climate change policies governed at a global scale and fire suppression, land management and urban planning decisions made at the local, state and federal level.

But the debate of water management, fire management or land management aside, we should all be able to agree that helping our fellow Americans recover from natural disasters is a shared responsibility and a moral imperative. Trump’s threat to use the victims of wildfires as pawns in a game of political chess is abhorrent.

Wildfires don’t choose whose homes to burn based on the resident’s political affiliations or policy positions, and a candidate for president of the United States shouldn’t choose which Americans to help based on their political affiliations or policy positions, let alone the policy decisions of their governor.

Of course, Trump is too shortsighted and spiteful to recognize that in his quest for vengeance against California’s “woke” governor, he is hurting the very people who are most likely to be Trump supporters. After all, rural residents of Western states are more likely to face the threat of wildfire and more likely to vote Republican.

Newsom responded to Trump via X, saying that “(Trump) just admitted he will block emergency disaster funds to settle political vendettas. Today it’s California’s wildfires, tomorrow it could be hurricane funding for North Carolina or flooding assistance for homeowners in Pennsylvania.”

We agree. Americans of all political stripes and in every region of the nation should ask ourselves, if Trump is willing to throw rural Westerners under the bus to score political points, what’s to stop him from throwing the rest of us under the bus as well?

Trump doesn’t care about governing, let alone governing for all Americans. He cares about having the power to punish his perceived enemies via any means at his disposal.