Newsom calls Trump ‘sick’ over threats to wildfire disaster aid

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) lambasted former President Donald Trump over the weekend after the Republican nominee threatened to withhold wildfire aid if reelected to the White House.

Newsom called Trump a “sick” man Saturday in a post on X, claiming that the former president was threatening disaster aid for political reasons.

“@realDonaldTrump shows us exactly who he is—threatening life saving disaster aid to achieve his political goals,” Newsom said.

The Democratic governor shared a video from Trump’s rally in Coachella , California , during which he discussed water conservation in the state.

Without providing any exact details, Trump told the crowd that he would “take care” of the situation and “force it down his throat” — referring to Newsom.

“And we’ll say, 'Gavin, if you don’t do it, we’re not giving any of that fire money that we send you all the time for all the fire, forest fires that you have,'” Trump said. “It’s not hard to do.”

It is not the first time the former president has threatened to withhold aid from the Golden State if elected to a second term. In September, Trump said he would block aid to California unless Newsom agreed to increase water deliveries.

“If he doesn’t sign those papers, we won’t give him money to put out all his fires, and if we don’t give him the money to put out his fires, he’s got problems,” Trump said at the time.

A recent Politico report also indicated that Trump attempted to do just that while in office. Mark Harvey, who served as the former president's senior director for resilience policy on the National Security Council, told the outlet that Trump initially withheld disaster aid from California amid the 2018 wildfires — the deadliest and most destructive in the state’s history.

Trump reportedly refused to approve the aid because of California's left-leaning votes, but he opted to give it after seeing voting data for Orange County, which leans Republican.

Trump’s public threats to California’s disaster aid come as the former president accused President Joe Biden's administration of not doing enough to support the victims of Hurricane Helene earlier this month.

In a post to his Truth Social platform, Trump claimed that Western North Carolina had been “totally and incompetently mismanaged by Harris/Biden.” He also falsely claimed that disaster funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency had been diverted to the border.

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In the weeks following the storm, FEMA officials and local Republican lawmakers have sought to dispel such rumors. Last week, Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC) went as far as to publish a page on his official site “debunking” several myths regarding the recovery efforts tied to Hurricane Helene.

While he said FEMA has had its “shortfalls” in its recovery response, Edwards described the rumors as “outrageous.”