Lara Trump reacted to the devastating Los Angeles wildfires on Fox News Monday with political attacks and climate denialism, infuriating critics on social media.
“These people cannot help themselves,” President-elect Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law said of Democrats. “You just referenced how no one wants to take any blame for anything in California. Instead, they are blaming climate change.”
“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 added.
As she spoke, Fox News displayed a chyron that read, “Liberal jurisdictions double down on climate alarmism.”
California’s reservoirs were not dry, though firefighters did encounter issues with water supply to hydrants due to high demand. The catastrophic wildfires, driven by intense winds and tinder-dry conditions, erupted after a critically dry period — Los Angeles recorded just 0.8 mm of rain from July 1 to January. As California suffered through one of its hottest summers on record, vegetation that had proliferated during an intensely wet spell dried out to create an abundance of kindling.
“Wintertime fires in Southern California require a lot of extreme climate and weather events to occur at once,” Park Williams, a climate scientist at the University of California, told The New York Times.
Scientists say the unprecedented winter fires demonstrate how extreme climate swings, or “whiplash” conditions, are intensifying to increase the likelihood of fires and other disasters.
And according to some experts, even the most well-resourced fire agencies would have struggled immensely to control the infernos under this perfect storm of conditions.
That didn’t stop President-elect Donald Trump and other Republicans from political finger-pointing as firefighters were still working to contain the blazes and people were escaping their homes.
State and local officials have faced questions about their preparedness for the fires and the hydrants that ran dry as local systems were pushed to extremes.
One reservoir in the Pacific Palisades area, which was devastated by the fires, was offline at the time for repairs, also raising questions. Experts have said it would have helped if it had been active, but given the unprecedented demand, the issues would likely still have persisted.
“This is a really complex, complicated and emergent issue that just hasn’t been on the radar for mostly anyone, and so I just don’t think that there is individual blame to go around at all,” Faith Kearns, director of research communications at Arizona State University’s Arizona Water Initiative, told NBC News of the water management issue.
“Those were exceptional fire conditions that we’re seeing in LA, drought, climate change and then these high winds.”
Lara Trump’s reductive and misleading take on the disaster frustrated critics.
“How dumb can you be?” posted prominent political scientist Norman Ornstein.
See some of the reactions below.
The Countdown To Trump Is On
Already contributed? Log in to hide these messages.