Mr. Trump, who rarely made harsh remarks to end the crisis, disrupted a two-hour west drive to visit the airport in McLean Park outside Sacramento, where an Air Force plane crashed. Not far away, the largest fire, now mostly contained, has recently burned more than 363,000 acres.
As soon as President Sacramento got off the plane at McLean Airport, where the stench of smoke filled the air, he did not wait for his scheduled briefing to tell reporters, as the reason for this expression was not climate change, but poor forest management.
“When a tree falls down after a short period of time, it dries up a lot – really like a match stick,” Mr. Trump said. “And they can explode. Also leaves. When you dry leaves on the ground, it is just fuel for the fire. “
In a subsequent briefing, however, Governor Gavin News and his environmental adviser urged the president to accept the role of climate change. Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, very politely doing so, confirming his working relationship with the President, thanking federal help and agreeing that forest management needs to be improved.
But Mr. Newsme noted that only 3 percent of the land in California is under state control while 57 percent is federal forest land, which means the administration is governed by federal law.
“As you might suggest, I value the working relationship,” Mr. Newsome said. But he said the weather reversal was clearly a factor. “Something is happening to the world’s plumbing, and we come from a perspective, humbly, where we have presented science and the evidence we have observed is self-evident that climate change is real, and that makes it even more intense.”
