As POTUS Rants About ‘Explosive Trees,’ Biden Warns Trump Win Means ‘More Of America Ablaze’

US President Donald Trump speaks to the press on the tarmac as he arrives at Sacramento McClellan Airport in McClellan Park, California on September 14, 2020. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP) (Photo by BRENDAN SMI... US President Donald Trump speaks to the press on the tarmac as he arrives at Sacramento McClellan Airport in McClellan Park, California on September 14, 2020. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP) (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images) MORE LESS
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President Trump on Monday continued dismissing climate change as a cause behind the raging wildfires across several West Coast states by making an absurd suggestion in his attempt to bolster his argument that lack of “forest management” is to blame for the ongoing devastation.

Shortly upon landing in McClellan Park, California ahead of a briefing on the wildfires and surveying the damage from the relentless blaze, Trump told reporters that a “lot of things were possible” when pressed on whether climate change was worsening the wildfires.

In the vein of blaming the wildfires on lack of “forest management,” the President then nonsensically claimed that trees can “explode” if they get dry “like a match stick.”

“With regard to the forest, when trees fall down, after a short period of time, about 18 months, they become very dry and like a match stick,” Trump said. “There is no more water pouring through them. They just explode. They can explode.”

After saying that “years of dried leaves” need to be cleaned up in forests because he thinks they are “fuel for a fire,” Trump claimed that leaders of “forest” nations in Europe told him forest management was the key to preventing wildfires.

“He said we have trees that are more explosive in terms of fire than they have in California, and we don’t have any problems because we manage our forests,” Trump said, without naming “the head of a major country” he referred to. “We have to do that in California.”

During the wildfire briefing Monday afternoon, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) acknowledged the need for forest management to combat wildfires to Trump, but urged the President to recognize that climate change is real and worsens the crisis.

“We come from the perspective, humbly, where we submit the science is in and observed evidence — it’s evident that climate change is real and that is exacerbating this,” Newsom said.

After Newsom conceded that “there is an area of at least commonality on vegetation and forest management” and urged the President to respect “the difference of opinion out here” regarding climate change, Trump simply nodded and said “absolutely, appreciate that.”

Later in the briefing, the President off-handedly brushed off climate change as a real concern while California Secretary for Natural Resources Wade Crowfoot demanded that Trump “recognize the changing climate and what it means to our forests and actually work together with that science.”

In response to Crowfoot’s assertion that it’s not enough to recognize that the solution to the wildfires is only about vegetation management, Trump sarcastically replied, “it’ll start getting cooler, you just watch.”

Crowfoot told Trump that: “I wish science agreed with you,” which prompted the President to doubt that “science knows, actually.”

Around the same time, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden continued his rebuke of Trump’s dismissal of climate change while speaking in Wilmington, Delaware on Monday afternoon.

While counterattacking Trump’s unfounded assertion that Biden would “abolish” the suburbs if elected president, Biden mentioned wildfires burning the suburbs in the West, floods wiping out suburban neighborhoods in the Midwest and hurricanes “imperiling suburban life” along the country’s coasts, in a warning against the dire long-term consequences of the President’s reluctance to acknowledge climate change.

“If we have four more years of Trump’s climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned in wildfires? How many suburbs will have been flooded out? How many suburbs will have been blown away in superstorms?” Biden said. “If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if more of America is ablaze?”

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Notable Replies

  1. Exploding trees?!? Can they be fended off with a good raking?

  2. He’s militantly stupid!

    California Natural Resources Sec’y Wade Crowfoot: If we think it’s all about vegetation management, we’re not going to succeed.
    Trump: “It’ll start getting cooler. You just watch.”
    Crowfoot: “I wish science agreed with you.”
    Trump: “I don’t think science knows actually.”

  3. Avatar for gryka gryka says:

    Nope. Because leaves explode too…

    (Gods help us!)

  4. How do people have conversations where he says that and not, say, fling a water bottle at his head?

    — Jonathan Dalecki (@jonathandalecki) September 14, 2020
  5. Free bad faith chickens.


    Michael E. Mann
    @MichaelEMann

    ·

    2h

    To those (like Trump) who continue to blame “forest management”, note that most of the wildfires we are talking about (a) aren’t forest fires, and (b) have become LARGER and MORE INTENSE become of CLIMATE CHANGE. See

    @AAAS

    /

    @SciLine

    : https://sciline.org/quick-facts/wildfires-climate-change

    Fires are prevelant in brush (chaparral) and Mediterranean Annual Grassland (introduced grasses from the old world).

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