Trump on California wildfires: ‘You got to get rid of the leaves’
Trapper Byrne Aug. 20, 2020 Updated: Aug. 21, 2020 1:48 p.m.
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It was a return to an assertion Trump made after the Camp Fire in November 2018, which destroyed much of the Butte County town of Paradise and killed 84 people. Although the federal government controls more than half the forestland in California and state and local agencies oversee just 3%, the president blamed California for logging restrictions and not doing more to thin out forests.
In particular, Trump said, Finland was largely able to avoid forest fires because Finns “spend a lot of time raking.”
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“You know,” Trump went on, “when a tree falls, after 13 to 14 months it becomes extremely dry. You look at some of these fires, they don’t really catch where the trees are growing because they’re wet. The water’s pouring up the tree. And they just don’t want to listen. They mocked us when I said that. You got to clean your floors. Just an expression.”