Former President Trump painted a dystopian image of California as crime-ridden, water-starved and flooded with immigrants in the country illegally, which he cast as a warning about what will happen to the nation if Kamala Harris is elected president.
“I’m here today in California with a very simple message for the American people: We cannot allow comrade Kamala Harris and the communist left to do to America what they did to California,” he told reporters Friday from his bluff-top golf course in Rancho Palos Verdes, with the Pacific Ocean and Catalina Island in the background. “The state of California is a mess, with people leaving, and nothing’s gonna stop them.”
Trump said if he were elected, he would stop sending California federal firefighting aid unless Gov. Gavin Newsom, whom he referred to repeatedly as “Newscum,” enacted his policy priorities on issues such as water and taxes.
“Those fields are going to be all green instead of 1% green. And maybe even more important, you’re not going to have illegal immigrants pouring into your country and killing your family. You’re not going to have the problems that you have right now. We’re going to lower your taxes. … But with this group, everything is dead. … The water coming here is dead, and if he doesn’t sign those papers, we won’t give him money to put out all his fires. And if we don’t give him all the money to put out the fires, he’s got problems,” Trump said in response to a question about helping Americans struggling with natural disasters, such as wildfires in California, without specifying which papers he was referring to. “He’s a lousy governor.”
Newsom responded on X that Trump was revealing who he was.
“Every voter should be made aware of this. @realDonaldTrump just admitted he will block emergency disaster funds to settle political vendettas,” Newsom wrote. “Today it’s California’s wildfires. Tomorrow it could be hurricane funding for North Carolina or flooding assistance for homeowners in Pennsylvania. Donald Trump doesn’t care about America — he only cares about himself.”
Despite losing the 2020 presidential by 5 million votes in California, the former president claimed he would win the state if votes were properly counted.
“You don’t have an honest voting system. They send out millions and millions of ballots. They go all over the place,” he said. “You have a very dishonest system over here. If I ran with an honest vote counter in California, I would win California.”
There is no evidence to suggest elections in California or any other state have been conducted improperly, and voters have overwhelmingly favored Democratic candidates in statewide votes for many years.
Trump pledged to increase Californians’ access to water if elected.
“I’m going to give you more water than almost anybody has, and the farmers up north are going to be able to use 100% of their land, not 1% of their land, and the water is going to come all the way down to Los Angeles, and you’re going to have more water than you ever saw,” Trump said. “So California, vote for Trump, and you’re going to have water, and you’re going to have growth, and you’re going to have prosperity.”
In his first news conference since his debate with Harris on Tuesday, Trump spoke for more than an hour. He repeatedly railed at the moderators as biased, claiming he won — though post-debate polls suggest otherwise — and also pledged he would order mass deportations, starting in Ohio and Colorado, if elected.
Ohio is the home of Springfield, which has a large population of Haitian immigrants. Trump claimed during the debate that they were eating people’s pets, an unfounded assertion that has been rebutted by local officials. Asked about the city receiving bomb threats in the aftermath of his debate remarks, Trump said, “The real threat is what’s happening at our border.”
Trump was repeatedly asked about his association with far-right activist Laura Loomer, who has earned the ire of some Republicans for promoting conspiracy theories and bigoted rhetoric.
Before the debate, Loomer wrote on X that if Harris wins, “the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center.”
Trump said he was unfamiliar with what Loomer wrote, but said she was a supporter and held strong opinions. When a reporter noted that Loomer had been seen traveling on his plane, Trump responded, “A lot of people do. It’s a very big plane.”
During a news conference full of dark imagery and angry pronouncements, Trump also found time to brag about his golf course.
“It’s world championship course, it fronts on the Pacific Ocean. … Very few courses front on the Pacific Ocean,” he said. “I have the ocean; Pebble Beach has the bay. The ocean’s better than the bay.”
Donald Trump leaves the news conference at his Trump National Golf Club on Friday.
(Christina House/Los Angeles Times)
Trump bought the golf course in 2002 for the discounted price of $27 million after the 18th hole fell into the Pacific three years earlier. The property played a role in Trump’s New York fraud trial, with the state attorney general suing Trump, three of his children and his company for allegedly inflating the club’s value and conservation easement as part of a broader lawsuit that included other Trump properties across the country.
The former president is seeking to build as many as 23 homes around the golf course, which is a half-mile from the active slide area. His campaign said it was “monitoring” conditions in the city.
The Harris campaign called Trump’s appearance “bizarre.”
“Donald Trump took his trainwreck on the debate stage straight to California,” said campaign spokesman James Singer. “In a rambling, defensive, often incoherent event to promote his golf course, he yet again showed the country how he is melting down.”
The golf course is in Rancho Palos Verdes, a city that is under a state of emergency issued by Newsom this month because of extreme land movement triggered by back-to-back rainy winters.
Hundreds of homes nearby have had their electricity and gas cut off. Neighborhoods near the golf course are under a city-issued evacuation warning, with the fissured land moving about 9 to 12 inches a week and houses cracking and sliding off their foundations.
John Cruikshank, the city’s mayor, met with Trump and spoke briefly about the need for state and federal aid to shore up the land.
Trump was in the midst of a two-day fundraising swing through Harris’ home state. On Thursday, donors paid up to $250,000 to attend an event in Beverly Hills.
The former president is scheduled to attend a Friday afternoon fundraiser in the Bay Area hosted by relatives of Newsom’s wife. Couples are being asked to pay up to $500,000 to attend the Woodside event hosted by Tom and Stacey Siebel. Tom Siebel is a billionaire software developer and businessman who has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump’s 2024 campaign and is a second cousin once removed of Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the Democratic governor’s wife.
On Thursday, Trump called the debate “a monumental time,” telling an audience in Tucson that he won. He lambasted the moderators and falsely claimed Harris supports allowing babies to be killed after birth and wanted to confiscate people’s guns. He also hammered on immigration — one of his campaign’s top issues and an important one in the border state.
“People said I was angry at the debate,” Trump said. “And yes I am angry, because he allowed 21 million illegal aliens invading our communities,” he added, apparently referring to President Biden.
Trump announced a new economic plan, “no tax on overtime.” He has already called for an end to taxes on tips and on Social Security benefits.
“That gives people more incentive to work,” Trump said about his new proposal. “The people who work overtime are among the hardest-working citizens of our country, and for too long, no one in Washington has been looking out for them.”