MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough on Friday blamed Los Angeles’ “inferno” wildfires for cuts to infrastructure spending — as he blasted “the government’s complete failure to protect” residents.
“We don’t know the exact reasons for the government’s complete failure to be able to protect these homes,” the left-leaning anchor told viewers on Friday morning.
“I don’t think we can say it’s just the smell. We don’t know what it is. But I think it’s going to be like Hurricane Katrina,” he continued. “I mean, the infrastructure has been cut.”
Both California Gov. Gavin Newsom and local government officials such as Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass have been repeatedly criticized this week for alleged mismanagement that may have exacerbated the devastation currently wreaking havoc in the region.
“You can’t just say it’s Karen Bass. You can’t just say it’s Gavin Newsom. This has been a trend for 30 years,” Scarborough argued.
Over the past three decades, three of the five governors in the Golden State have been Democrats. Four of the five mayors who have overseen Los Angeles County in that time have also been Democrats.
“The longer we get into this, the more I think about how New Orleans didn’t invest in their shelter system, how they didn’t invest in critical infrastructure, and people died because of it,” Scarborough said as he continued to tear up. obvious failures.
“It’s hard to hear people say, in one of the richest cities in the world, to say, ‘Oh, we don’t have enough water to protect people’s homes.'”
His reaction followed reports that fire hydrants in Los Angeles had run dry and left firefighters helpless as countless homes began to burn earlier this week.
All three 1 million-gallon water tanks that supply hydrants in Pacific Palisades were already empty by 3 a.m. Wednesday, according to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
Elected officials in the Golden State have been under intense scrutiny in recent days as the Palisades fire and two other massive wildfires — fueled by Santa Ana winds — have devoured entire neighborhoods, leveling thousands of homes, businesses and schools along their streets. .
President-elect Donald Trump has blamed Newsom for the out-of-control wildfires, claiming the governor chose to protect an endangered fish species instead of sending much-needed water to Southern California.
He argued that Newsom had blocked a federal order that would have diverted more water from Northern California, a wetter climate, to parched regions of the Golden State “including areas that are currently burning in a practically apocalyptic manner.”
“He wanted to protect a fundamentally worthless fish called smelt … but he didn’t care about the people of California,” Trump said on Truth Social.
While Newsom was criticized for blocking the water diversion order, Bass was criticized for cutting $17.6 million from the Los Angeles Fire Department’s budget for the 2024-25 fiscal year.
She was devastated, too, by her own constituents because she was 7,400 miles away in Africa to attend the inauguration of Ghana’s president while fires engulfed her city.
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