Remarks Following a Briefing on the Atlantic Hurricane and Wildfire Season and Preparedness Efforts and an Exchange with Reporters

The President. Thank you very much for being here. We're going to talk just briefly about the wildfires that have sort of taken over our country because of bad management. And we'll be doing a briefing and talking about preparations for the upcoming hurricane and wildfire season.

I don't think any administration has ever done this. We did it to a certain extent for 4 years, but we're doing it much more so now. And we can save a lot of lives, but a lot of cost, a lot of damage, lot of everything.

And with me—as you know, Marco is doing something very, very important right now, so I'll take a pass on Marco Rubio, but he's with me in spirit.

Kristi Noem, Doug Burgum, Brooke Rollins, and a couple of other very well-known people are standing behind me. They're going to say a few words as to what they're doing with respect to response on wildfires and stopping wildfires due to proper management, proper forest management.

And I just want to thank you all for being—and maybe——

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins. I'll start?

The President. ——Brooke, I'll ask you to start.

Secretary Rollins. That sounds great, sir.

The President. Good.

Secretary Rollins. And then Secretary Burgum.

First of all, thank you, Mr. President, for inviting us here to the White House to provide an update on our coordinated efforts across your Federal Government to ensure our Nation's wildland firefighting system is focused on fighting wildfires quickly and effectively.

Sir, you have made it clear from the beginning that strong leadership and decisive action and the protection of American lives and communities are the top priorities for both Secretary Burgum and for me this fire season.

As you can see from the red areas on the map over here on the President's left, this is going to be an above-normal fire season, which is why we wanted to, sir, ensure that we were taking direction from you in moving forward. This means that a higher likelihood of large and intense wildfires than typically expected for this time of year for the next few months.

[At this point, Secretary Rollins continued her remarks, concluding as follows.]

One final point, we are 96 percent capacity in terms of our firefighting hiring, and this is actually ahead of where President Biden and his team was a year ago. So I wanted to make sure that's very clear. We are all on board and moving forward with a fully operational. We will be more ready than ever before for this season.

Thank you, sir.

The President. Thank you very much, Brooke.

Please, Doug.

Secretary of the Interior Douglas J. Burgum. Well, thank you, Mr. President. And thank you, Secretary Rollins, for the partnership that we have.

Between the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of Interior, there's over 700 million acres of surface land that the Federal Government manages in this country. And under President Trump's orders, we are now actually managing that land.

[Secretary Burgum continued his remarks, concluding as follows.]

So we'll continue to unify this work, but we have to work with the States because, this year, there have been 1.2 million acres already burned. Only 25 percent of that has been on Federal. The other 75 percent has been on State lands or private lands. And so, together, we have to work to protect America's resources. And under President Trump's leadership, we've gotten the guidance through the EOs to make that happen.

The President. Thank you very much, Doug. He's doing a great job. They all are.

Russell Vought.

Office of Management and Budget Director Russell T. Vought. Sure. Thanks, Mr. President.

From a funding perspective, the accounts that support the important work that these Cabinet secretaries are doing are funded. They are flush. The main one, the disaster relief fund, has $13 billion. It's projected to get us all the way into the end of the fiscal year. So we're in a very good place.

And we've been—the President has personally been a steward of the taxpayer resources on every one of the expenses that the States have come in for to put us in the position where we are ready for this season.

Thank you.

The President. Great job. Thanks, Russell.

Director Vought. Of course.

The President. Kristi.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi L. Noem. Yes. And, Mr. President, we are in hurricane season right now. It will last for the next several months, and we are prepared for what is coming. We are anticipating that we will have higher-than-usual activity. During this hurricane season, we could have three to five major storms, up to a dozen other hurricane-level thresholds that we will meet throughout this season.

And FEMA sands prepared and has been working with all of our regions on training, predeploying resources, making sure that individuals are out there ready to respond to each State as they bring the necessary resources to take care of their people.

[Secretary Noem continued her remarks, concluding as follows.]

We've got many Governors that just recently had terrible, tragic losses—from tornadoes, from other events that went through their States—and FEMA was extremely responsive, and they've all been very happy. I think, Mr. President, you even spoke to one of those Governors this morning——

The President. That's right. Brad Little.

Secretary Noem. ——who is very happy, and the Missouri Governor as well, who is very happy. I—as soon as something happens in their State, I am in direct communication with the Governors to make sure they have what they need, but also making sure that they have the ability to make decisions, to respond to the people that live in their States.

The President. Thank you very much.

Secretary Noem. Yes, absolutely.

The President. Great job, everybody.

So we want to wean off of FEMA, and we want to bring it down to the State level. A little bit like education, we're moving it back to the States so the Governors can handle it. That's why they're Governors.

Now, if they can't handle it, they shouldn't be Governor. But these Governors can handle it, and they'll work in conjunction with other Governors. They'll give each other a hand.

But the FEMA thing has not been a very successful experiment. Very, very expensive, and it doesn't get the job done. You saw what happened in North Carolina under the past administration. And when we got in, we did a great job for North Carolina, brought it back. But it was a disaster—FEMA—and it has not worked out well. It's extremely expensive.

And, again, when you have a tornado or a hurricane or you have a problem of any kind in a State, that's what you have Governors for. They're supposed to fix those problems, and it's much more local.

And they'll develop a system, and I think it will be a great system. And also, when it comes to forest fires.

So, for years, I've been meeting with heads of other countries, and they are forest countries. They call themselves forest—Austria and others. And they say: "We're a forest nation. We live in a forest." And they don't have forest fires.

And in one case, he said: "You know, our trees are much more flammable than California, but we don't have forest fires because we clean the floor. We sweep the floor of leaves, of dead debris, of trees that fall." Because, after 18 months, the tree is, like, real—it's like tinder wood, and it goes up. It virtually explodes. Well, we don't take the trees out.

California is a disaster, what they've done in California. They don't do anything. And if you did, you wouldn't—you almost would not have forest fires. And you could say you—in theory, you shouldn't have any forest fires.

And we spend billions and billions of dollars a year because people don't clean the forests. And we're going to clean the forests. We're going to start cleaning them. We're going to get rid of deadwood. The environmentalists say, "Oh, no, let it regenerate." It doesn't regenerate. It just sits there, and it usually catches fire.

And we're going to have a whole new system, and it's called forest management. And if you look at some of these countries in Europe and other places that literally live in forests—very flammable forests—and they don't have problems. And they called me. They don't even know how it's possible that we can have the fires that we have. And the people behind me know that very well, and we're going to start working on that system.

And we're going to save a lot of trees. We're also going to cut down trees and replant new trees, and that whole industry is going to be growing, because we don't need the help of anybody. We have just about more—as much but more than almost anybody else in terms of lumber and wood.

So we're going to be doing some great work having to do with forest fires. It's going to start effective—really, it started a few months ago, and it's forest management.

And, Doug, I think you're really the head of that. Interior is—I guess you're the largest landlord, perhaps, anywhere in the world, I understand. [Laughter] That's a very good—that's a nice position.

You may want to just give a few words on the cleaning of the floor of the forests.

Secretary Burgum. Well, happy to do that.

And of course, as President Trump had said, yes, between Interior and Forest Service, the—which is part of the USDA—700 million acres of surface area. Much of that is in forestland. That is a tremendous resource. It's part of America's balance sheet.

When we let it burn, then we actually have to spend money, coming through FEMA and other places. So we spend taxpayer dollars cleaning up a mess that could have been prevented.

[Secretary Burgum continued his remarks, concluding as follows.]

So, President Trump, of course, has got a commonsense strategy. He's empowering all of the leadership that's standing up here today for us to go get this job done. It's going to get America back in the timber business. We're going to put out fires when they're small and—as opposed to when we can't control them when they're large. And we're going to have revenue coming into the Federal Government from those timber sales, as opposed to—and those timber leases to the private companies, as opposed to revenue going out through FEMA after the fact when we're cleaning up a mess.

So the whole thing makes complete sense. And Brooke and I and Kristi and Russ, we're all excited to go out and implement the President's vision.

The President. And we have some of the best timber anywhere in the world, and we don't use it. We freed it up—Lee Zeldin has done an incredible job in that regard—from environmental restrictions that are ridiculous. And a lot of it's been freed up. The rest of it's being freed up. Some areas, we'll protect—continue to protect, but we're going to be freeing up most of it. And, again, we have some of the best in the world.

And when I hear you say that we lost more in fires than we produce, it's so crazy, because we shouldn't lose very much at all. We—I mean, I could say we shouldn't lose any, if it was perfect, but it should not be ever like what we've seen, where we're sending billions of dollars to California all the time because, obviously, in California, they are not doing a good job in any way, shape, or form—any other thing either.

So, with that, I'm heading to Fort Bragg right now. I think the helicopter is landing as we speak. But if you want, we'll take a few questions. Please.

[Several reporters began asking questions at once.]

Political Protests in Los Angeles, California

Q. Mr. President, will you invoke the Insurrection Act to deal with the situation in California?

The President. If there's an insurrection, I would certainly invoke it. We'll see.

But I can tell you, last night was terrible. The night before that was terrible. We have—as you've seen, it was on most of your networks—people with big, heavy hammers pounding the concrete and pounding curbs, pounding it, breaking up all—and handing these big chunks of concrete to people. And they were taking that concrete, going up on bridges, and dropping it into the roof of a car. They were throwing it at our police. They were throwing it at our soldiers that are there. And we got it stopped, and we have them in custody right now.

Look, if we didn't get involved, right now, Los Angeles would be burning, just like it was burning a number of months ago with all the houses that were lost. Los Angeles right now would be on fire, and we have it in great shape.

Q. How will——

The President. We're not playing around.

Q. How will you determine whether or not there is an insurrection? And then, also——

The President. Well, you'll take a look at what's happening.

Q. And then when——

The President. I mean, I could tell you, there were certain areas of that—of Los Angeles last night you could have called it an insurrection. It was terrible.

But these are paid insurrectionists. These are paid troublemakers. They get money. And when you take a look at what they're doing—where they show up, and everyone's saying, "What's he doing?" He's pounding the curbs. This one guy is pounding the curb, breaking the curb, and handing big pieces of granite—in some cases, it's granite—granite and concrete to other people, and they're running out with it.

And then we watch the other people, and they try and throw it into the face of the soldiers, throw it into the face of the police, and they hurt some people very badly. They go up on bridges. They drop it down on the cars as the cars are moving.

They're not breaking the curb because they're doing a demolition service. They're breaking it to hand out to people as a weapon. That's a bad—that's bad stuff. I've never seen that before.

Federal Emergency Management Agency

Q. Mr. President, how soon do you want to see FEMA eliminated? And what's your message to the Governors about how much more of an expense is going to fall to States for disaster response?

The President. Yes. Well, it's not going to be so much the States. We're going to give out less money. We're going to give it out directly. It will be from the President's office. We'll have somebody here—could be Homeland Security—but we're going to give it out through a method where it's given out.

As an example, I just gave out $71 million to a certain State. They were looking to do about 120. They were very happy with the $71 million. We did a little cutting, and they—were very happy with it.

So we're going to do it much differently. We think, after this—Kristi, I'd say, after the hurricane season, we'll start phasing that in.

Secretary Noem. Yes, sir. You set up a FEMA Council. Over the next couple of months, we'll be working on reforms and what FEMA will look like in the future as a different agency, as—under the Department of Homeland Security, to the President's vision. And it will empower Governors to go out and respond to emergency situations.

And that—what the President does best is to make sure that the taxpayers are only fulfilling the need to which is appropriate, and that people are responsible to respond to their own people closest to home. So it's a——

The President. If a certain State, as an example, gets hit by a hurricane or tornado, that's what a Governor—you know, a Governor should be able to handle it. And frankly, if they can't handle it, the aftermath, then maybe they shouldn't be Governor. Okay?

Governor Gavin C. Newsom of California/National Guard Deployment to Los Angeles, California

Q. And, Mr. President, when is the last time you spoke with Governor Newsom?

The President. Hmm, a day ago. I called him up to tell him, "You've got to do a better job." He's doing a bad job, causing a lot of death and a lot of—potential death.

If we didn't send out the National Guard—and last time, we gave him a little additional help—you would have—Los Angeles would be burning right now. Los Angeles would be not a lot different than what you saw take place in California, in Los Angeles, just a little while ago.

And, you know, you got to remember: We have the Olympics coming, and we don't want people looking at Los Angeles like it was, like it would have been. It would have been bad.

Last night, they had total control. If we didn't have the military in there, the National Guard—and then we also sent in some marines. We had some bad people. We have people—they look in your face, and they spit right in your face. They're animals.

And these are paid insurrectionists. These are paid troublemakers. They're agitators. They're paid. Do you think somebody walks up to a curb and starts hammering pieces out, has all the equipment necessary, and starts handing it out to people to use as a weapon? These are paid insurrectionists or agitators or troublemakers. You can call it whatever you want.

And we ended it, and we have in custody some very bad people. Some very bad people.

Q. Mr. President——

The President. Did you see the guy throwing the rocks at the police cars as they went by and crushing their windows and endangering our police? We're not going to let that happen.

Yes.

Political Protests in Los Angeles, California/Use of Military Personnel in U.S. Cities

Q. Pardon me. Mr. President, on those marines. Governor Newsom has described them as "political pawns." I'm curious for your reaction to that and what you see as the marines' role. And what are their rules of engagement?

The President. All I want is safety. I just want a safe area. We have—Los Angeles was under siege until we got there. The police were unable to handle it. You could speak to the chief. He said it on television. Three nights ago, he said, "This is—more than we can handle." They said that.

And the L.A. police—I know a lot of the police in L.A. They're good—they're great people. But they're given instructions not to do this, not to do that. But in this case, they were trying their best. They were not able to handle it. It was out of control.

When we got there—and I—you have to remember, I've been here before, and I went right by every rule. And I waited for Governors to say, "Send in the National Guard." They wouldn't do it, they wouldn't do it, and they just wouldn't do it. It kept going on and on, got worse and worse.

And in Minneapolis, that city was burning down. It was 7 days. And I said, "I don't care." The Governor, who's a Governor that just happened to be running for Vice President—a total—you talk about an incompetent Governor. He's an incompetent person. That he was picked—well, I was actually very happy he was picked for other reasons.

But this guy wouldn't call the National Guard, and we ultimately just sent in the National Guard. We stopped it. But that was after 7 days. And I said to myself, if that stuff happens again, we've got to make faster decisions, because they don't want to do it.

The radical left—it's usually radical left, and it's usually Governors that are Democrat, and they don't want to call them in. They don't want to save lives. They don't want to save property. They don't want to call them in. I don't know what it is. We sent them in—not early. We sent them in late, as far as I'm concerned.

But big problems—as you know, 3 nights ago, big problems were ensuing. If we didn't send in the National Guard quickly, right now, Los Angeles would be burning to the ground.

Q. The marines is, a lot of people think, an escalatory step though. These are guys who fight wars. Are you at all concerned that things could get out of hand with marines——

The President. No, when I see people——

Q. ——in an American city?

The President. ——throwing concrete into cars, when I see people—the kind of people that I saw on your network—doing danger to the police and to the military and to the National Guard, no. It's okay. You know, you start running out of people. When you have 2,000 people from this—a National Guard standpoint—we have a very big military—but the National Guard, they needed a little extra help, and we sent them a little—and we did a great job last night.

We had—well, you had a lot of cars go up in smoke and flame, and you had a lot of bad scenes. But it was pretty minor by comparison.

This morning it's very calm. We'll see what happens later. But they know, if they go there, they're not going to get anywhere, because we have the National Guard. Then we backed it up with a number of marines.

Yes.

Texas

Q. Mr. President, do you agree with Governor Abbott soon signing legislation to mandate the Ten Commandments in school classrooms?

The President. Having to do with what?

Q. Governor Abbott is soon going to sign legislation to mandate displays of the Ten Commandments in school classrooms. Do you support him?

The President. I have to take a look at it. I'm going to have to look at it.

Deployment of National Guard Troops to California

Q. Will the National Guard be in California indefinitely? How long will they be there until you think that—

The President. Until there's no danger.

Q. ——the mission is finished?

The President. When the—it's easy. And look, it's common sense. You ask me that question. When there's no danger, they'll leave.

You would have had a horrible situation had I not sent them in. Horrible. You'd be reporting on a lot of death and a lot of destruction that's not going to take place.

I think, if you look, every night, it got less and less. They were met with very strong force—the bad people—the bad, sick people that do what they do. But these are paid people, in many cases—not in all cases, but in many cases. And they really are. They're agitators.

Political Protests in Los Angeles, California/Governor Gavin C. Newsom of California/Infrastructure

Q. I was wondering if you had any response to Mexican President Sheinbaum who condemned the violence there? Have you been in touch with her at all?

The President. Said what?

Q. I was wondering if you had any response to what Mexican President Claudine [Claudia; White House correction] Sheinbaum said in response——

The President. What did she say?

Q. She condemned the violence in L.A.

The President. Oh, I do too.

Q. Yes. Have you been in touch with her at all?

The President. What, you think I don't condemn it?

Secretary Noem. She's——

The President. I condemn the violence in L.A., ladies and gentlemen, but I also stopped the violence in L.A. And by doing what I did, I stopped the violence in L.A.

That would have been—I think maybe I'd ask Kristi to speak to that. That would have been an unbelievable tragedy. We would be talking—I don't know that we'd even be here right now. It would have been so bad, I'd probably maybe be out there. I don't know.

But, Kristi, could you speak to that a little bit, please?

Secretary Noem. Absolutely. So, in 2020, I was a Governor of a neighboring State to Tim Walz and watched him let his city burn. And the President and I have talked about this in the past, that he was not going to let that happen to another city and to another community where a bad Governor made a bad decision.

So Claudia Sheinbaum came out and encouraged more protests in L.A., and I condemn her for that. She should not be encouraging violent protests that are going on.

[Secretary Noem continued her remarks, concluding as follows.]

So I'm incredibly proud of the President for activating the National Guard and for sending in these Marines, because these Marines are specifically trained to meet the need that we have on the ground in L.A. right now.

And Governor Newsom has done a disservice to the status of California for many years. The people there should never elect him into a leadership position ever again. He clearly cannot be trusted.

The President. The Governor is a nice guy, but he's grossly incompetent.

Secretary Noem. He's a terrible Governor.

The President. When it comes to his railroad that he's building——

Secretary Noem. That's right.

The President. ——where it's like 30 times over budget, nobody's ever seen anything like it. Now it doesn't even go to San Francisco and L.A. It's way short of it. After years of work and overruns like nobody's—those contractors are some of the wealthiest people in the world, I guarantee you that, because that money goes to those contractors. They just—did a number on the wallet of the people of California.

That train—you should look at that train. That is the greatest—I've never seen cost overruns—I've seen cost overruns and great incompetence over my life. I've never seen anything like that.

Immigration Enforcement Actions/Former President Joseph R. Biden, Jr./Border Security/Political Protests in Los Angeles, California/Wildfires in Los Angeles Area

Q. Mr. President, these protests obviously started in reaction to these large-scale ICE operations in Los Angeles. Should people expect to see similar operations in the rest of the country?

The President. Yes.

Q. And would similar protests——

The President. Yes, we——

Q. ——see similar response?

The President. As you know, we're moving murderers out of our country that were put here by Biden or the autopen. The autopen really did it. The people—whether it's Lisa Monaco or whoever operated the autopen—these are criminals. The people are criminals that allowed these criminals into our country.

And I don't think that Biden knew what the hell he was doing. I don't think he even knew about it.

But when they opened up our borders for the whole world to come in—yes, we're going to get them out. We're getting them out. We're starting to get acknowledgement from the courts that, you know, is a system. They come in without courts, and they go out, they have—they want trials and everything else. I think that's starting to work out now. Judges are starting to see what a terrible situation it is.

Many of those people that you saw on television last night are criminals that were allowed into our country by Biden, and they want to stay, and we don't want them. And they come from jails, and they come from mental institutions, and they come from all over the world, not just South America, and we're not going to let them stay.

And this is the first, perhaps of many, or perhaps—you know, if we didn't attack this one very strongly, you'd have them all over the country. But I can inform the rest of the country that when they do it, if they do it, they're going to be met with equal or greater force than we met right here.

We did a great job. The people—you, Kristi, and Tom Homan and all of the people—Pete Hegseth—all of the people involved did an amazing job.

We stopped a disaster. And it looks like a planned disaster, not just—this didn't just happen. They had weapons, they had tools, they had everything you needed. I mean, they were throwing iced water in bottles—in glass bottles at officers and at soldiers.

These are—you could not use the word "insurrection," but you could also use the word. These are very dangerous people. They're bad people. They were met with heavy force, and they folded. And they may be there a little bit tonight. They may be there a little bit, but it seems to be getting less and less, because they're going there, they're met with a very heavy force.

And if they weren't, you would have—that city right now would be on fire. It would be burning down. The rest of it, what's left over, because the other fire was started because they wouldn't allow water into L.A. They wouldn't allow water into California because they had it all shifted out to the Pacific Ocean, and I turned it around.

And I told them to do it in my first term, and they didn't do it. We had COVID, and they didn't do it. And I told them to do it. We did it in the second. Now we have billions of gallons of water flowing down, but Newsom should have done this. He's an incompetent man and an incompetent Governor.

Okay. Any other questions?

U.S. Army 250th Anniversary Parade in the District of Columbia

Q. Mr. President, do you have any message to adversaries as the Army kicks off 250-year-birthday celebration?

The President. I just think it's amazing. We're going to have a fantastic June 14 parade, Flag Day. It's going to be an amazing day. We have tanks. We have planes. We have all sorts of things. And I think it's going to be great. We're going to celebrate our country for a change.

You know, recently, as you know, with World War II—the victory of World War II, I called up France, and they were celebrating the victory. Well, we helped them a lot, as you know. I don't have to get into that. But I called up other countries, they were all celebrating the victory. We're the only country that didn't celebrate the victory—and we're the one that won the war. Okay? If wasn't for us, that war—you would be speaking German right now. Okay?

Secretary Rollins. That's right.

The President. We won the war. And you might be speaking Japanese too. I mean, you might be speaking a combination of both.

We won the war, and we're the only country that didn't celebrate it, and we're going to be celebrating big on Saturday. We're going to have a lot of—and if there's any protester wants to come out, they will be met with very big force, by the way. For those people that want to protest, they're going to be met with very big force.

And I haven't even heard about a protest, but you know, this is people that hate our country, but they will be met with very heavy force.

Q. Mr. President, one last question on California.

The President. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you very much. Thank you.