Trump Blames California For Recent Wildfires, Threatens To Withhold Federal Aid

President Trump on Thursday blamed California for blazing wildfires in the state and threatened to withhold federal aid.

“I see again the forest fires are starting," Trump said during a speech in Scranton, Pennsylvania. "They’re starting again in California. 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.

"Maybe we’re just going to have to make them pay for it because they don’t listen to us."

The comments come after former Trump administration official Miles Taylor on Tuesday accused Trump of directing officials to cut wildfire relief funding to California for political reasons.

More than two dozen major fires are currently raging across California following lightning and thunderstorms over the weekend. Officials said Thursday that more than 500,000 acres have been burned by the flames. Over the past three days, California had over 11,000 lightning strikes.

In November 2018, Trump made similar comments as California dealt with wildfires.

“I was with the president of Finland and he said, ‘We have a much different — we're a forest nation.’ He called it a forest nation, and they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things,” Trump said at the time. “And they don't have any problem.”

Trump’s remarks were mocked by Finns on social media.

Finnish President Sauli Niinisto said he did not remember discussing raking the forest floors with Trump as a means to prevent wildfires.

“I mentioned [to] him that Finland is a land covered by forests and we also have a good monitoring system and network,” Niinisto told Finland’s second-largest newspaper, Ilta-Sanomat. “We take care of our forests.”