WA Gov. Jay Inslee Slams Trump Over His Climate Denialism as Fires Rage Across the West: ‘We Deserve a Federal Gov’t That Will Help Us Breathe’

A mask-wearing Washington Governor Jay Inslee condemned President Donald Trump’s dismissive response to climate change as millions of acres in his state as well as Oregon and California are being ravaged by wildfires.

Speaking with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Monday evening, the governor explained the conditions that have led to the massive conflagrations in his state and pushed back hard on Trump’s comments from earlier in the day. During a Monday afternoon roundtable meeting with California public safety officials, Trump had dismissed the scientific consensus on climate change and falsely claimed “it will start getting cooler” when confronted by California’s Secretary for Natural Resources about the role of global warming in fueling the wildfires raging across the West.

“This is such a disaster in any dimension, but a particular disaster because we had our state turned into a tinder box by climate change,” Inslee said. “We have grass now that’s almost like gasoline. A spark will make it explode. We have fires that just create walls of fire, 20, 30 feet high from grass and sage brush. Those fires and grass and sage brush consumed whole towns in our state. And that’s why frankly it is so infuriating that instead of leading solutions to climate change that caused climate fires, aren’t just wildfires, they’re climate fires, they’re caused by climate change we created through our activities as humans. But instead of helping us solve that problem, [Trump]  continues to make excuses, and excuses are not what people want.”

Trump had seemed to blame the three West Coast states — which are all led by Democratic governors — for the wildfires and cited a failure of forest management as a leading cause. However, as Gov. Gavin Newsom pointed out on Monday, nearly 60 percent of the wildfires are in federally-managed national forests.

“We are disappointed the Trump administration did not allow a previous request in the last catastrophic fires,” Inslee said. “We hope we can fare better in this situation. But they need something that we all need. We need a federal government that will work with the states to build clean energy jobs, to put people to work building clean energy so we don’t lose more towns in the west coast and soon the rest of the United States. That’s what we really need. I can’t overstate how traumatic this is for my state. People yesterday were sort of clinically depressed under this blood red smoke. This has created a recognition that we face conditions that are apocalyptic. This is like sort of a Hollywood movie. It deserves a response to stop this from taking over our nation.”

Blitzer then noted that Inslee had sharply criticized Trump’s comments about the wildfires as “maddening” and the impact of the president’s climate denialism.

“People in those conditions deserve a president who are going to help them. They’re not getting help from this president. Today he said the problem are the leaves on the forest floor. What a bunch of ignorance. For the president to try to tell us we’re not managing our forest, I don’t think he could find which end of an ax to hold or pitch a tent without an instructional manual,” Inslee complained. “He continues, in fact expressed some pride in taking us out of the Paris climate agreement that might have helped us do something about that. When you have the suffering, that is maddening.”

Blitzer then asked why Inslee, who was indoors, was wearing his mask during the interview.

“Well, mostly for the coronavirus, but people are masking, it does help them a little bit with the smoke, but not enough,” Inslee said. People still need to stay inside and that is very difficult. For young people, tried to get them to get exercise. We deserve a federal government that will help us breathe. I don’t think that’s asking too much from a  president.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.

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