President-elect Donald J. Trump offered fresh criticism early Sunday of the officials in charge of fighting the Los Angeles wildfires, calling them “incompetent” and asking why the blazes were not yet extinguished.
“The fires are still raging in L.A.,” Mr. Trump wrote on his Truth Social site. “The incompetent pols have no idea how to put them out.”
Mr. Trump’s comments indicated that the fires, and officials’ response to them, will likely occupy a prominent place on his domestic political agenda when he takes office on Jan. 20. He has renewed a longstanding feud with California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, who in turn has accused Mr. Trump of politicizing the fires.
Mr. Newsom told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that he had invited Mr. Trump to visit “in the spirit of an open hand, not a closed fist,” but had yet to receive a response. The governor said he was taking seriously threats by the president-elect to withhold disaster assistance. If he were to do so, Mr. Newsom said, Mr. Trump would be in effect “threatening our first responders.”
California politicians have faced criticism since the fires broke out on Tuesday, including questions over how local and state authorities had prepared for them and how they have grown so quickly into huge blazes.
Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles had to contend with questions about whether there was adequate warning about the likelihood of devastating fires, and why there was a shortage of water and firefighters during the initial response. At a news conference on Thursday, she avoided a question about her absence from the city when the fires began — she was in Ghana on a previously scheduled official visit — and said that any evaluation of mistakes or failures by “any body, department, individual” would come later.
Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, has also fended off criticism from Mr. Trump, who blamed him for the failure to contain the fires and claimed he had blocked an infusion of water to Southern California over concerns about how it would affect a threatened fish species.
Mr. Newsom’s press office responded by saying in a statement that the “water restoration declaration” that Mr. Trump had accused him of not signing did not exist. “The governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need,” the statement said.
Mr. Newsom and Kathryn Barger, the chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, have invited Mr. Trump to tour fire damage in the city. He has not responded publicly to those invitations.
At least 16 people had died as a result of the fires as of Sunday morning, and at least 12,000 structures had been destroyed, officials said. Mr. Trump alluded to that devastation in his post on Sunday.
“Thousands of magnificent houses are gone, and many more will soon be lost,” he wrote. “There is death all over the place. This is one of the worst catastrophes in the history of our Country. They just can’t put out the fires. What’s wrong with them?”
His post did not mention any officials by name.
