Last updated on January 29th, 2021 at 11:37 am
Speaking to the hosts of “Fox and Friends,” President Donald Trump said “European forest cities” do a better job of handling climate change than the state of California, who he appeared to blame as wildfires continue to ravage the American West.
“What is the right to act, to react to climate change within reason without destroying the economy?” asked host Brian Kilmeade.
“You have forests all over the world. You don’t have fires like you do in California,” Trump said. “In Europe they have forest cities. You look at countries, Austria, you look at so many countries, they live in the forest, they’re considered forest cities, so many of them. And they don’t have fires like this and they have more explosive trees. They have trees that will catch easier but they maintain their fire, they have an expression, they thin the fuel. The fuel is what’s on the ground, the leaves, the trees that fall, that dry, they’re like a matchstick after 18 months, if they’re on the ground longer than 18 months, they’re very explosive stuff, they have to manage that stuff.”
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You can watch the segment below.
Brian Kilmeade asks Trump "the right way" to react to climate change, and he focuses on European "forest cities" with "more explosive trees" that don't burn like California, because "they thin the fuel … the leaves." pic.twitter.com/YOGgXp9vbZ
— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) September 15, 2020
As recently as last month, Trump blamed California for the wildfires and threatened to withhold federal funds to fight the blazes. At the time, he also claimed “flammable” trees are to blame.
“I see again the forest fires are starting,” he said during a rally in Pennsylvania. “They’re starting again in California. I said, you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests — there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up.”
Alan is a writer, editor, and news junkie based in New York.
