Trump Calls on California Gov. Gavin Newsom to ‘Resign’ While L.A. Burns

President-elect Donald Trump has called on Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom to resign while the city of Los Angeles burns, saying it is “his fault.”

“One of the best and most beautiful parts of the United States of America is burning down to the ground,” Trump wrote in a Wednesday night Truth Social post. “It’s ashes, and Gavin Newscum should resign. This is all his fault!!!”:

In an earlier post on Wednesday, the president-elect wrote that the devastating wildfires represent Newsom’s and President Joe Biden’s “incompetence and mismanagement”:

“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 said on his social media platform. “Let this serve, and be emblematic, of the gross incompetence and mismanagement of the Biden/Newscum Duo. January 20th cannot come fast enough!”

In yet another post aimed at the California governor, Trump called him out for refusing to sign the “water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way.”

Newsom’s communications director, Izzy Gardon, issued a statement in response to Trump’s claims to NBC News, accusing the Republican of “playing politics”:

There is no such document as the water restoration declaration – that is pure fiction. The Governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need.

The “water restoration declaration” that Trump mentioned seemingly refers to the Memorandum on Developing and Delivering More Water Supplies in California that he signed in February 2020, which aimed to “help develop and deliver water supplies in the Central Valley of California.”

Newsom and then-California Attorney General Xavier Becerra denounced the plan on the day it was announced, calling it a “harmful attack on our state’s critical ecosystems and environment.”

The governor believed Trump’s plan to be damaging to native fish species and threatened legal action. 

“We will file legal action in the coming days to challenge the federal biological opinions to protect highly imperiled fish species close to extinction,” he said in a statement obtained by Politico at the time. 

Newsom has yet to push back on Trump’s latest call for him to resign, but the president-elect was far from the only person to tell him to leave office.

Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R), billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, and countless other X users echoed Trump’s call: