Social media users are slamming Lara Trump after she demanded an explanation for why people believe climate change is responsible for the wildfire conditions that have devastated Southern California.
Speaking with Fox News’ Sean Hannity above a banner that read “Liberal jurisdictions double down on climate alarmism,” the former RNC co-chair, who is married to Eric Trump and is Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, wondered why no one was taking the “blame” for the lack of water to fight the blazes, which have scorched through tens of thousands of acres and have claimed at least 25 lives.
“You just referenced how no one wants to take any blame for anything in California. Instead, they are blaming climate change,” Trump said.
“I would really love for someone out there to explain to me how climate change is the reason that the reservoirs were dry, that there was no water in the fire hydrants,” she continued.
Social media users grilled Lara Trump’s comment.
“How dumb can you be?” political scientist Norman Ornstein remarked on X.
Another user wrote: “Um…drought? Lack of rain? Does she really not know?”
While one X poster commented: “These are the people who want to scrap the Department of Education.”
Officials have discussed the strain the wildfires put on the urban water system.
“We had a tremendous demand on our system in the Palisades,” Janisse Quiñones, chief engineer at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said at a briefing last week. “We pushed the system to the extreme.”
A 117 million-gallon reservoir complex in the Pacific Palisades could have helped the situation, but it was being repaired and was out of use. Still, it wouldn’t have “saved the day,” as one official put it.
The official cause of the fires is still being investigated but officials have said that critical fire weather conditions helped fuel the blazes. The firefighting effort was stymied due to a brutal windstorm, which both fanned the flames and initially prevented crews from aerial drops of water, officials have said.
Lara Trump seemed to take a dig at California’s leadership and their ability to lead the city through the disaster.
“Was it the fact that climate change got rid of $17 million of the Los Angeles Fire Department’s budget?” she said on Hannity. “Is that what happened out there? Or was it climate change that didn’t manage the forestry properly? These are things that are basics.”
The Los Angeles Fire Department’s budget was cut by $17.6 million last fiscal year, but the city’s Mayor Karen Bass has maintained that the reduced finances did not affect the handling of the blazes: “I think if you go back and look at the reductions that were made, there were no reductions that were made that would have impacted the situation that we were dealing with over the last couple of days.”
Donald Trump has baselessly blamed President Joe Biden and California Gov. Gavin Newsom for the lack of water to fight the blazes.
