ANALYSIS — For Donald Trump and Joe Biden, there’s at least one final battle.
The president-elect and outgoing chief executive have engaged in wars of words since Biden decided to seek the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
Biden won their first fight, ousting Trump from power some four years ago. But Trump evened the score when his juggernaut comeback campaign helped persuade Democratic honchos to nudge Biden out of their rematch last year, culminating in a decisive November victory for the former president.
With wildfires raging around Los Angeles and the number of people forced to evacuate already crossing 360,000, according to the administration, the longtime combatants could be set for one last tit-for-tat over how to prevent and fight such blazes in the Golden State.
Their public responses to what Vice President Kamala Harris described as “apocalyptic” scenes from Southern California have all the hallmarks of the way the two presidents have confronted one another verbally for half a decade.
Trump minced no words in lambasting Biden — and other Democratic officials, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom — as too incompetent to handle natural disasters. Or just about anything.
“The fires in Los Angeles may go down, in dollar amount, as the worst in the History of our Country. In many circles, they’re doubting whether insurance companies will even have enough money to pay for this catastrophe,” Trump contended in a Wednesday social media post.
On those two points, the current and future presidents agree. Biden, at a Thursday briefing with Harris and other officials, called on Congress to “step up” and approve a disaster funding request that he contends will be needed to respond to the devastating wildfires. And he and Harris said the federal government would need to determine how to help families who were underinsured or had policies canceled.
Those agreements, though, haven’t stopped Trump.
“Let this serve, and be emblematic, of the gross incompetence and mismanagement of the Biden/Newscum Duo,” he wrote Wednesday, using his preferred insult for the California governor. “January 20th cannot come fast enough!”
In contrast, Biden, with only about a week left in his long political career, has opted to take the high road publicly — as Democrats usually do, often to their political detriment. For instance, during that Thursday briefing, Biden would not directly refer to Trump, who this week renewed his years-old claim that federal and state Democrats have been purposely directing water flows away from typical wildfire hot spots in California to protect one “tiny fish” species.
Biden stressed a need to explain to the American people how power grids work. He explained at several points of the briefing that local utilities in Southern California have been preemptively shutting down power stations and grids, hoping to prevent new fires from sparking. But, the president said, doing so came with a big cost: water pumping stations have no power to supply firefighting efforts down the line.
Biden and several federal officials say they’re working to ensure that generators are en route to burning parts of the state, but getting them there and operational takes time, the president said.
“The fact is the utilities understandably shut off power because they’re worried the lines that … carry the energy were going to be blown down and spark additional fires,” Biden said. “When they did that, it cut off the ability to generate pumping the water. That’s what caused the lack of water in these hydrants. And so, CAL FIRE is bringing in generators to get these pumps up and working again so that there’s no longer a shortage of water coming out of these hydrants,” the outgoing president added, referring to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Outgoing White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, during a gaggle with reporters on Air Force One earlier this week, was asked about the president’s reluctance to say Trump’s name and to respond to some of his more outlandish statements.
“Again, I’m not going to respond to everything that the president-elect says,” she said, adding later that Biden has preferred “speaking directly to the American people.”
But as the fires burn, people die and property is lost, Biden’s by-the-book approach, coupled with how long it can take state and federal government entities to move personnel and equipment, has given Trump more time to own the top lib on his way out the door — and land political blows on Newsom, seen by some Democrats as a contender for the party’s 2028 presidential nomination.
“One of the best and most beautiful parts of the United States of America is burning down to the ground. It’s ashes, and Gavin Newscum should resign,” Trump wrote on social media Wednesday. “This is all his fault!!!”
About two hours before Biden and Harris, with the press corps observing in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, tried to portray an administration doing all it could to contain the fires and help affected Californians, Trump was pushing his version of events.
“Governor Gavin Newscum should immediately go to Northern California and open up the water main, and let the water flow into his dry, starving, burning State, instead of having it go out into the Pacific Ocean. It ought to be done right now, NO MORE EXCUSES FROM THIS INCOMPETENT GOVERNOR. IT’S ALREADY FAR TOO LATE!” he said on social media Thursday.
Even if Biden is mostly correct about the tragic trade-off of shutting off power transmission but losing water-pumping capabilities, the president-elect has created a perception that Democratic officials are asleep at the valve.
And Thursday once again showed how Democrats, including Biden, have never quite overcome Trump’s adeptness as the GOP’s chief marketer and communicator.
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