President Donald Trump knocked California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, both Democrats, over the slow pace of rebuilding after the Palisades and Eaton Fires, which occurred in January.
Though the debris cleanup and hazardous waste removal — both run by the federal government — have been swift, rebuilding has been slow because of delays in permitting insurance payouts. Many residents are being forced to sell their lots — or even their surviving homes — because of state and city inaction. But Newsom and Bass have been focused on partisan priorities, such as redistricting and stopping immigration enforcement.
Rougly 300 permits had been issued, out of about 900 applications, as of last week, with many homeowners waiting to receive insurance payouts, or considering selling their lots or homes due to the many delays.
Trump spoke to reporters in the Oval Office as he fielded question about his takeover of policing in the District of Columbia. He noted that he had been successful in stopping the recent riots in Los Angeles:
If we didn’t go to Los Angeles to help this incompetent governor and a mayor that doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing, if we didn’t go to Los Angles you wouldn’t have a big part of it burned down. The other part of it would have burned down, too. I don’t think you would have been able to have the Olympics. … If I didn’t send in the troops, I don’t think you would have had Los Angeles in condition to have the Olympics. I think you would have had to tell them, “I’m sorry, you’re going to have to go someplace else.” And if you look at the police commissioner or the sheriff, he said, “We really needed them. Thank God they were here. We really needed them.” That was the first two or three days after we solved their problems. Then he said, “Well, I think we could have maybe done it.” No, he was told what to say. He said, “You go back to your files and see what he said.” He said, “Thank goodness they came. If I didn’t go and put our military there or National Guard in that case, and we’ll go military if we have to, but the National Guard went there. They were very effective. If we didn’t do that, I don’t think you would have had the Olympics in Los Angeles. The place would have been just like the 25,000 houses that burned down where, by the way, the governor ought to focus on getting their permits. You know, the federal permits are given. Those are the hard ones and they were given a long time ago. People can’t rebuild their house because they can’t get permits from the state and the city and they ought to focus on that because it’s very upsetting. I went there right after the fires. I walked the streets and I met a lot of great people. They want to rebuild their homes. We took care of it from the federal standpoint, but they’re not taking care of it from the city, the mayor and the governor. They’re not getting their permits. They can’t build their houses.
As Trump spoke, Newsom was holding a rally and press conference about the special election he has called for November 4 to gerrymander California’s congressional map to favor Democrats — his top priority.
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 Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
