Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville said that California “doesn’t deserve” any funding for the devastating wildfires that have ravaged Los Angeles.
The Alabama senator, a staunch Donald Trump ally, said he didn’t object to sending the state “some money,” but not unless state leaders “change their ways.”
Tuberville joins a growing number of Republicans who have hit out at California’s political leaders for the fires, blaming them partly on “woke policies.”
The cause of the fires, which have so far claimed 25 lives, has not yet been determined.
The senator was asked by host Chris Salcedo on right-wing network Newsmax on Monday: “Why should other states be bailing out California for choosing the wrong people to run their state?”
“We shouldn’t be,” Tuberville responded, before calling the state’s lawmakers “imbeciles.”
“They got 40 million people in that state and they vote in these imbeciles in office, and they continue to do it,” he said. “And it’s just a very small part of them in that state that’s doing it. If you go to California, you run into a lot of Republicans, a lot of good people. And I hate it for them. But they are just overwhelmed by these inner city woke policies with the people that vote for them.”
Tuberville added that he approved of sending “some” funds to the state but its leaders need to “make some changes.”
“I don’t mind sending them some money. But unless they show that they’re going to change their ways and get back to building dams and storing water, doing the maintenance with the brush and the trees and everything that everybody else does in the country, and they refuse to do it — they don’t deserve anything, to be honest with you, unless they show us they’re going to make some changes,” Tuberville said.
On Monday, House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested that lawmakers might attach “conditions” to wildfire aid for California.
“I think we’re going to have a serious conversation about that,” Johnson told reporters. “Obviously there has been water resource mismanagement, forest mismanagement, mistakes, all sorts of problems, and it does come down to leadership. It appears to us that state and local leaders were derelict in their duty in many respects. That’s something that has to be factored in.”
“I think there should probably be conditions on that aid,” he added.
Trump has blasted California Governor Gavin Newsom almost daily since the fires broke out, and on the campaign trail, the president-elect threatened to withhold wildfire aid if the governor didn’t go along with his ideas on water policy.
In response, Newsom has invited Trump to visit the affected areas and meet Californians impacted by the devastating wildfires.
“The hundreds of thousands of Americans — displaced from their homes and fearful for the future — deserve to see us all working together in their best interests, not politicizing a human tragedy and spreading disinformation from the sidelines,” Newsom wrote.
