Donald Trump is on an insult tour of California, and today he stopped by his 17-hole championship golf course for an impromptu press conference.¹ Here's the news the New York Times doesn't report but the LA Times does:
Trump said if he is elected, he would stop sending California federal firefighting aid unless Gov. Gavin Newsom, whom he referred to repeatedly as “Newscum,” enacted his policy priorities on issues such as taxes.
“If he doesn’t sign those papers, we won’t give him money to put out all his fires. And if we don’t give him all the money to put out the fires, he’s got problems,” Trump said. “He’s a lousy governor.”
There you go. If California doesn't enact tax laws and farm policy that Trump likes he's going to take away our wildfire funding.
Now, what Trump obviously doesn't know is that about half our wildfires occur on federal land, which means they're the responsibility of the federal government no matter what. Local wildfires are mostly fought with state money with additional federal aid coming from FEMA. Presumably Trump could cut that off by refusing to allow FEMA to declare California's wildfires as disaster areas. He's done it before. It would end up withholding, oh, something like $200 million, which isn't nothing but is also only about 0.05% of the California budget. We'd survive. Trump's threats are perhaps not quite as scary as he thinks they are.

More to the point is this: What kind of president threatens to cut off wildfire aid if a state doesn't pass water and tax policy he likes? Even if this is just blather, how can you vote for a person whose entire agenda is driven by personal vengeance against anyone he disagrees with? It's diseased.
¹Just kidding. The 18th hole fell into the ocean some years ago, but I'm sure it's all fixed and back to regulation length now.
Trump's threats are scary. His message is, "Do what I say no matter what or you'll pay a price you don't want to pay, and I don't care what it costs." It is diseased. When the disease is in the human body, we call it cancer. When the disease is in the body politic, we call it authoritarianism. The two are just different manifestations of the same phenomenon. A part serving itself at the expense of the whole.
Authoritarianism? What happened to good old-fashioned dictatorship?
i'm surprised he didn't tell newsom he had to fabricate dirt on kamala harris in return for fema aid
i guess that's progress of a sort
That comment wins the internets!!!
Can you impeach a presidential candidate?
I know California isn't going to go for Trump. But what is there to gain by threatening the lives and well being of the Republicans that also call California home? His desperation is showing. And as usual he resorted to childish name calling. He's such a douchebag.
I guess because a lot of his base consider California a liberal bastion so this is one more way of owning the libs.
His cultists were willing to die from COVID and they're willing to burn to death in wildfires in order to serve their Drumpfenführer.
A Colorado teen was shot in the face by a town council member while trying to ask the official’s girlfriend for permission to take homecoming photos on her property, cops said.
The 17-year-old boy told authorities that he and a friend hopped the fence at a home in Conifer, about 30 miles southwest of Denver, and walked up the driveway on Tuesday in hopes of speaking with the homeowner about using their property for homecoming photos, the Colorado Sun reported.
When they were unable to find the homeowner, they returned to their car and began writing a note to ask about using the property for a photoshoot.
https://nypost.com/2024/09/12/us-news/teen-shot-in-the-face-by-colorado-town-council-member-cops/
This would likely be a violation of the anti-commandeering doctrine that prevents federal funds from being used to push unrelated policies. However, whether it violates the doctrine isn't relevant to the Supreme Court, which would likely allow him to get away with it. Though the silver lining is that, if we get a president some time after Trump, they would be able to use the same approach to demand better voting laws, an end to gerrymandering, clean energy policies, progressive taxes, etc.
You really don't understand the MAGA fascists, do you? As a retired attorney, I'm embarrassed to say that I am unfamiliar with the anti-commandeering doctrine. But if you correctly describe it, you are also correct that it would be no obstacle for this thoroughly corrupt Supreme Court to give their blessings to any such actions by Drumpf. But you think it would apply the same analysis to permit a Democratic government to force red states to adopt liberal policies? Au contraire, mon ami. (And even if we had a different Court by then, it would be likely to apply actual law and not MAGA law.)
Sounds a bit like SD v Dole to me.
Does he not realize that the parts of California most likely to burn are often the most Republican parts of the state? Trump may not care but Congress will, including a fair number of his own party.
And so will the American people. No matter how politically divided we are, Americans are still united about coming together and helping out without regard to politics when there is an emergency like a fire or hurricane. I don’t think withholding would be a political winner.
Yep. Someone needs to get a quote from US Rep Doug LaMalfa (R) on what he thinks of this. His district includes Paradise, CA.
I seem to recall Republicans in congress voting against aid for disaster relief because it was a blue state. A quick google search says they also voted against aid to Florida.
It's not just personal vengeance; this is open extortion.
But, he's doing it while he's out of office, and therefore, the threat has no color of the office of the president. So, the threat comes from his political campaign, undercutting the SCOTUS ruling that would have protected such an act if he should end up in office and carried out such action.
Everyone seems to misapply the Court's immunity decision, as legally ludicrous and practicably horrible it is. It does not mean that the courts are required to permit illegal presidential actions to continue, only that presidents are immune from subsequent criminal prosecution for said action. (And indeed courts have had no trouble blocking Biden actions since the immunity decision. Though yes, I realize that these are MAGA courts enjoining actions of a Democratic president, so there may be a flaw in my reasoning.)
Didn’t he basically do this with critical medical equipment in the early days of COVID?
Imagine Harris in Tampa, Florida declaring that as President she would withhold hurricane disaster money from Floridians unless DeSantis did what she said.
Why worry about Tampa? How about "If a hurricane hits Palm Beach, and West Palm Beach, unless the Governor of Florida.........."
Anybody we know live in Palm Beach?
"What Trump obviously doesn't know..." It would be far more efficient to simply post a list of things that Trump actually -does- know.
Or as a line on MASH about Frank Burns, "There's so much he doesn't know it's hard to keep up with it all."
Wish a Dem would do that to the fucking Southrons who sue all the time.
I’m not sure if all of Trump’s bad ideas originate in Russia but this one might have.
A year or two ago, there was an awful fire in St. Petersburg at a warehouse (iirc) and that whole part of the city was up in flames. The fire had grown so large because of a long delay in getting the fire department to the scene while the owner of the warehouse had to “negotiate” (i.e., bribe) the local firefighters to get engaged.
"...how can you vote for a person whose entire agenda is driven by personal vengeance against anyone he disagrees with?"
For a lot of his followers, this is the kind of stuff that they LIKE about him. They care less about niceties and regulations and more about flipping the middle finger. Trump is the middle finger.
Yes, but the question is how come 40% of the population are good with this.
There will allways be some assholes around, but 40% is a surprising large number.
The 40% (or 45%) aren't all assholes -- probably only roughly half of them are.
The others are Good
GermansRepublicans. And their thinking runs something like "oh I don't believe that silly nonsense aboutdeath campswithholding firefighting money, but we really DO need tomake the trains run on timecut taxes, and we have GOT to do something about theJewishimmigrant problem!"TFG promises not to cash out of Trump Media and Technology Group, and the suckers believe and send the share price up: https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/13/investing/trump-social-media-stock/index.html#openweb-convo
I’m sure you can take that promise to the bank …
Oh, I see KD has posted on this.
I wonder if he can gift it or parts to his family and they can sell before lhe end of lockup.
This is a direct threat. Another insane utterance in a long line of insane utterances intended to keep him in the news cycle and his record, à la buttegieg, out of the cycle.
Why is he being so mean!!!
We have been raking our forests like mad.
We have the largest air tanker fleet.
Larger than the Forest Service.