Newsom To Crash Trump LA Wildfire Visit 'In Spirit Of Cooperation'

LOS ANGELES, CA — When President Donald Trump flies into Los Angeles Friday afternoon, he'll be met with at least one party crasher at the airport: California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who will be waiting on the tarmac with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.

Plans released by the White House Friday morning do not include Newsom. Trump and the first lady will take a tour of a Pacific Palisades neighborhood along with firefighters and fire victims and then head to a breifing wth Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, California members of Congress and water policy officials. Newsom is not on the list of attendees at either of the president's events.

As of Thursday afternoon, California's leader said he had not been invited to join the president in the communities devastated by the Palisades and Eaton fires as is customary when a president tours a disaster zone. But there is nothing ordinary about this visit.

The president will be visiting the sites of the most destructive and most costly disaster zones in U.S. History. And he'll do so after days of spreading misinformation about the state's water supply, holding up the fires as an indictment of California's leadership, and threatening to withhold federal disaster aid from the region.

Newsom, after spending years and months as Trump's political antagonist, will try to meet with the president to persuade him to release sorely-needed recovery aid for Los Angeles. The region must help thousands of families who lost homes and businesses to the flames, and the city has little time to rebuild before hosting the Olympics, Super Bowl and World Cup.

Friday morning in North Carolina Trump was asked what he wants to see from California leaders as he considered continued federal recovery funding.

"I want to see two things in Los Angeles -- Voter ID so that the people have a chance to vote, and I want to see the water be released and come down into Los Angeles and throughout the state," he said. "Those are the two things. After that I will be the greatest president that California has ever seen. I want the water to come down and come down to Los Angeles, and also go out to all the farmland that's barren and dry. You know, they have land that they say is equivalent to the land in Iowa, which is about as good as there is anywhere on Earth. The problem is it's artificial because they artificially stop the water from going on to the land.

"So I want two things -- I want Voter ID for the people of California, and they all want it. Right now you don't have Voter ID. People want to have voter identification. You want to have proof of citizenship. Ideally you have one-day voting. But I just want Voter ID as a start and I want the water to be released, and they're going to get a lot of help from the U.S."

Newsom, for his part, said he looks forward to Trump's visit and plans to meet him on the tarmac at the airport to provide a detailed briefing whenever he arrives. He sent a letter to the president last week inviting him to tour the devastation.

“I invite you to come to California again — to meet with the Americans affected by these fires, see the devastation firsthand, and join me and others in thanking the heroic firefighters and first responders who are putting their lives on the line,” the governor wrote, according to NBC.

No details about the anticipated trip have been released by the White House, although Trump himself has said he plans to visit Los Angeles. Late afternoon Thursday, Gov. Gavin Newsom said even he is unaware of Trump's plans, saying, "We haven't had any contact with the White House, as of this moment."

SEE ALSO:

• Trump Says He May Withhold Federal Aid For CA Over Water Policies
• CA GOP Pushes Back As Trump, Speaker Threaten Wildfire Aid
• Will Trump And Newsom Meet As Foes Or Crisis Leaders, Or Even At All?

Trump, has hurled criticism at state and local leaders over what he calls faulty water- and forest- management policies that he says contributed to the region's deadly wildfires.

"Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way," he wrote on his social media site while the fires raged Ja. 8. "He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California. Now the ultimate price is being paid. I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA! He is the blame for this."

On Wednesday, he went on Fox News and threatened to withhold aid to the state.

“I don’t think we should give California anything until they let the water run down,” Trump said in an interview with Fox's Sean Hannity.

Trump in the interview also called for reform of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, claiming it is “getting in the way of everything."

“I’d rather see the states take care of their own problems,” he said. He did not elaborate on his proposed reforms, only saying that the agency is “going to be a whole big discussion very shortly.”

Any meeting could be contentious. Trump has suggested using federal disaster assistance as a bargaining chip during unrelated legislative negotiations over government borrowing, or as leverage to persuade California to change its water policies.

Trump has a history of injecting politics and falsehoods into disaster response. During his first term, he talked about limiting help for Democratic states that didn't support him, according to former administration officials. While running for president last year, he claimed without evidence that Democrats were “going out of their way to not help people in Republican areas” of the battleground state of North Carolina.

The White House has asked California congressional members, including Democrats, to hold a roundtable at an airplane hanger in Santa Monica during Trump’s visit, according to a person briefed on the plans who demanded anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss them.

“Southern California and California has always been there for other regions of the country in their time of crisis, and we expect our country to be there for us,” Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat from the state, said this week.

Asked earlier this week about a Trump visit, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass told reporters she joined with Newsom and county Board of Supervisors Chair Kathryn Barger in extending the invitation to the newly inaugurated president.

"It's certainly my hope to meet with him," Bass said. "I know it's going to be a quick visit."

Asked what she plans to say to Trump, she said, "I'll say, `Welcome to Los Angeles.' And then immediately go into what we're facing right now and how we hope to continue the federal partnership, which we already have."

Bass said she hopes Trump "will be very supportive" of the city's partnership with federal agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which are both involved in debris clearance and recovery efforts from the area's deadly wildfires.

It will take work for the governor and president to focus on common ground.

State officials have blasted Trump's claims about water management as disinformation. Newsom wrote on social media this week that there is "no shortage of water in Southern California."

The group Restore the Delta, which advocates for the environmental protections in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, issued a statement saying Trump's assertion "grossly misrepresents the reality of California's water system and the needs of its residents."

"President Trump's claims that Delta water protections cause water shortages and exacerbate wildfires are false," according to the group. "Experts agree that Southern California's water challenges stem from climate- driven drought and infrastructure constraints -- not protections for fish or the Delta. This misinformation ignores that Los Angeles reservoirs are currently full and Delta water sustains essential ecosystems and local economies."

Speaking in Los Angeles Thursday, however, Newsom said he is grateful that Trump plans to visit the region and the governor plans to meet with the commander-in-chief with a spirit of cooperation.

"I hope he comes with the spirit of cooperation and collaboration," Newsom said. "That's the spirit (with) which we welcome him. I've said this many times -- open hand, not a closed fist. ... We had a great relationship during COVID, well-established, well-defined. I don't think there was a Democratic governor in the country that worked more collaboratively with the president. ... That's my mindset when it comes to emergencies and disasters. No politics. No finger-pointing. We're going to have the backs of the people of this state, and I hope the president comes back after his visit tomorrow and is here for not just the short run, but the long haul."

He also noted that debates over water policy and environmental policy are nothing new, saying those issues "have been litigated, adjudicated and politicized for as long as I've been alive." Newsom also took direct issue with Trump's claims about environmental policy impacting firefighting efforts in Southern California.

"I just, with respect, think it's incredibly important that people know the truth, because it's very damaging when people believe such misinformation," Newsom said. "And I don't mean it in a (maligning) sense. Maybe the president just doesn't know that there's not a spigot that can be turned to solve all the water problems that he alleges exist that don't exist as it relates to the state water system here in Southern California."

City News Service and the Associated Press Contributed to this report.