Newsom and California are frequently the target of Trump’s ire. Some of his most memorable criticisms of the state have been over how it manages its wildlands in the face of wildfire risk. In his first term, Trump suggested California should be “raking” their forests to clean up dead brush and trees.

The native landscape is chaparral, not forest—and clearing out the brush could make fires even worse. When the Palisades Fire started near a hiking trail in Los Angeles on January 7—quickly spreading to more than 200 acres in 20 minutes,

"I just want voter ID to start, and I want the water to be released, and they're going to get a lot of help from the U.S.," Trump said during a visit to North Carolina. On Wednesday Trump threatened to withhold aid and repeated a false claim that California Governor Gavin Newsom and other officials had refused to provide water from the northern part of the state to fight the fires.