During his inaugural address, President Donald Trump criticized California's response to the Los Angeles wildfires as he is scheduled to visit the Golden State to survey the damage on Friday.
Trump has been vocal of his disapproval of the way California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass have handled the fire response, accusing them of "gross incompetence," even suggesting that Newsom resign as governor.
In his first televised sit-down interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity since returning to the White House, Trump ripped Newsom for his leadership leading up to the deadly wildfires and his defense of sanctuary cities.
"If you actually polled the people, they don’t want sanctuary cities," Trump told Hannity. "But Gavin Newsom does, and these radical left politicians do. I watched Gavin Newsom try to answer that question. He looked like an idiot. He was unable to answer."
Trump claimed the lack of forest management and Newsom's reported refusal to allow stormwater from the north to flow down freely to Southern California helped contribute to one of the most destructive wildfires in the state's history.
Izzy Gardon, director of communications for Newsom's office, previously combated criticism of the governor's wildfire handling in a statement to Fox News Digital.
"The Governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need," Gardon said.
On Thursday, Newsom signed off on a relief package where the state will spend $2.5 billion to help with the Los Angeles wildfires recovery.
"This is about distilling a sense of hopefulness," Newsom said during a news conference.
Newsom's administration added that the state expects to be reimbursed by the federal government for the disaster relief funding.
It is not known if Trump plans to meet with Newsom during his visit Friday.
"We are glad President Trump accepted the governor’s invitation to come to Los Angeles," Newsom's office told Fox News Digital. "We are glad he took our invitation to heart."
Trump's criticism of California and Newsom's leadership in the state spans years, with the president singling out forest management, sanctuary cities, homelessness, crime and spending as contributing factors to the state's condition.
Trump is not the only person ripping Newsom for what is happening in California.
In the aftermath of the deadly Los Angeles wildfires, actor Mel Gibson, along with a number of other elite residents, accused Newsom and elected officials of mishandling the prevention and response to the disaster.
"As a citizen here, Newsom and [Los Angeles Mayor Karen] Bass, they want us to trust them to reimagine the city, our city, and how they think it should be. I mean, look at what they’ve done so far to this town," Gibson said in a previous exclusive interview with Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo.
"You got nothing but rampant crime, acute homelessness, high taxes, mismanagement of water, firefighters, defunding the department, and we’re supposed to trust them with millions of dollars to sort of remake where we live? It’s our city, it’s the city of the people, and they have another plan. … There’s still people from the Woolsey Fire still living in trailers. … When have you ever seen the government ‘build back better’? … At the very least, it's insensitive."
MEL GIBSON CALLS OUT 'MONUMENTAL MISMANAGEMENT' OF LA FIRES BY CALIFORNIA GOVERNMENT AFTER LOSING HIS HOME
The massive and deadly fires broke out in the Los Angeles area on Jan. 7, forcing tens of thousands of residents to flee for safety as their homes and businesses were destroyed.
Gibson also told Arroyo the elected officials’ mismanagement is another reason why Americans continue to flee the city.
Other celebrities, including Justine Bateman, called out Newsom and other Los Angeles officials to be removed from office because of the fires.
The governor's office previously shared a letter addressing water hydrants running out of water, stating that "while overall water supply in Southern California is not an issue, water mobility in the initial response was an issue."
"That is why @CAGovernor Newsom has ordered a full, independent review of LADWP. This cannot happen again," the post read.
Prior to the Los Angeles wildfire crisis, California leadership were being scrutinized for not being able to explain what happened to $24 billion meant to curb the homelessness issue.
California GOP leaders are calling for more accountability after the state auditor found that despite roughly $24 billion spent on homeless and housing programs during the 2018-2023 fiscal years, the problem didn’t improve in many cities.
The report also uncovered that the California Interagency Council on Homelessness (Cal ICH), which is responsible for coordinating agencies and allocating resources for homelessness programs, stopped tracking whether the programs were working in 2021.
CALIFORNIA GOP LEADERS CALL FOR ACCOUNTABILITY AFTER STATE CAN’T ACCOUNT FOR $24B SPENT ON HOMELESS CRISIS
The audit found it also failed to collect and evaluate outcome data for these programs due to the lack of a consistent method.
California Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher laid the blame on the Newsom administration.
"This is standard Gavin Newsom – make a splashy announcement, waste a bunch of taxpayer money, and completely fail to deliver," Gallagher said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
"Californians are tired of the homeless crisis, and they’re even more tired of Gavin’s excuses. We need results – period, full stop."
Despite the audit’s findings, Cal ICH said it has made improvements in data collection after AB 977 took effect on Jan. 1, 2023.
In a previous statement, Newsom's office said, "The State of California’s doing more than ever. We'll continue to do more. But this will be my final words on this: If we don't see demonstrable results, I'll start to redirect money. I'm not interested in status quo any longer. And that will start in January with the January budget. We've been providing the support to local government that embraces those efforts and focuses on a sense of urgency — and we're going to double down. If local government is not interested, we'll redirect the money to parts of the state, cities and counties that are."
Adding to the list of missteps made by California leadership: the decades-delayed and over-budget "train to nowhere."
California Republicans have reported that the state’s long-awaited high-speed rail network is nearly $100 billion over budget and decades behind schedule.
Former Republican California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who left office in early 2011, first introduced the high-speed rail system project, and his Democrat successor, Gov. Jerry Brown, continued the project.
Shortly after taking office in 2019, Newsom acknowledged in his first State of the State address that he would scale the project down from its original ambitious plan, saying it would cost too much and take too long to stay the course.
Months later, the Trump administration penned a scathing letter to California, informing the state that it was rescinding the multibillion-dollar grant awarded for the project under the Obama administration.
BIDEN ADMIN SENDS BILLIONS TO CALIFORNIA'S OVER-BUDGET, BEHIND-SCHEDULE 'TRAIN TO NOWHERE'
However, in June 2021, the Biden administration said it would reverse the decision and restore the funding. The Biden administration then sent California more than $3 billion in federal taxpayer funds in 2023.
In December 2024, several prominent California Democrats called on the U.S. Department of Transportation to approve a grant application for $536 million in federal funds to move forward with the project.
If approved, the federal funds will be boosted by $134 million in state money from California’s "cap & trade" program, according to the Sacramento Bee.
The project was originally planned as a $33 billion project consisting of 1,955 miles of railway connecting San Francisco to Los Angeles. Since then, the cost has ballooned to $113 billion and the project's scope has been dramatically scaled down to a 171-mile railway connecting Bakersfield, Fresno and Merced that isn't expected to be operational until 2030.
Overall, if the project is completed in 2030, it will have taken a decade longer than expected while costing $80 billion more and being 91% smaller than originally planned. Because of its repeated shortfalls, the project has been dubbed by critics as the "train to nowhere."
Newsom's office did not immediately provide a response.
During the presidential election, Trump went after his opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris, on the decades-old criminal justice policy crippling California.
Harris was not actually involved with pushing Prop 47 and did not take a stance on the issue throughout the campaign.
The ballot measure overwhelmingly passed in the deep-blue state and rolled back some of California's most controversial soft-on-crime policies.
Proposition 36, the Homelessness, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act, sought to undo portions of Proposition 47 by increasing penalties for some crimes, including classifying the possession of fentanyl as a felony.
PROPOSITION 36 OVERWHELMINGLY PASSES IN CALIFORNIA, REVERSING SOME SOROS-BACKED SOFT-ON-CRIME POLICIES
When Proposition 47 passed in 2014, it downgraded most thefts from felonies to misdemeanors if the amount stolen was under $950, "unless the defendant had prior convictions of murder, rape, certain sex offenses, or certain gun crimes."
Proposition 47 also reclassified some felony drug offenses as misdemeanors.
The initiative has been blamed by law enforcement officials and businesses for the rise in theft and smash-and-grabs that plagued California in the years since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Newsom remained opposed to the effort, saying it "takes us back to the 1980s, mass incarceration."
He also touted that California’s $950 threshold is the "10th lowest, meaning tougher than states like Texas ($2,500) or Alabama ($1,500) or Mississippi ($1,000)." His office noted that "Prop 47 did not change that threshold and neither did Prop 36."
California Labor Secretary Julie Su attempted to put the blame on Trump's first administration for "failing to provide guidance to foil sophisticated unemployment schemes" after state officials reported that at least $11.4 billion in unemployment benefits paid during the COVID-19 pandemic involved fraud.
Officials added that another $20 billion in possible losses was also being investigated.
In January 2021, Su said that of the $114 billion the state paid in unemployment claims during the coronavirus pandemic, 10%, or $11.4 billion, involved fraud and another 17% was under investigation.
CALIFORNIA UNEMPLOYMENT FRAUD SCANDAL GROWS TO $11 BILLION, WITH ANOTHER $20 BILLION UNDER SCRUTINY
"There is no sugarcoating the reality," Su said in a previous press conference. "California has not had sufficient security measures in place to prevent this level of fraud, and criminals took advantage of the situation."
Nearly all the fraudulent claims were paid through the federally supported Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program. The program was approved by Congress to provide unemployment assistance to those who usually wouldn’t be eligible, such as independent contractors.
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Officials added that the program’s broad eligibility requirements made it an easy target for criminals, including from Russia and Nigeria. In December, 21,000 prisoners scored more than $400 million from the state, including 100 prisoners on death row.
"It should be no surprise that EDD was overwhelmed, just like the rest of the nation’s unemployment agencies," Su said. "As millions of Californians applied for help, international and national criminal rings were at work behind the scenes working relentlessly to steal unemployment benefits using sophisticated methods of identity theft."
The governor's office did not immediately provide a response.
Fox News Digital's Bradford Betz, Stephanie Giang-Paunon, Morgan Phillips, Thomas Catenacci, Jamie Joseph and Charlie Creitz contributed to this report.
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