Make America Rake Again? Trump Claims Raking Will Prevent Forest Fires

During a visit to fire-ravaged areas of California this weekend, Donald Trump said that the state needed to take better care of the “floors” in the forest by raking them out more often. He claimed that this is what happened in Finland and now they don’t worry about wildfires. Not only are Trump’s comments completely false, but he’s also sparked international ridicule for the US once again as Europeans mock us with pictures of them “raking” the forest on social media. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.

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Over the weekend, Donald Trump traveled to the fire ravaged areas of California, including the city of Paradise that has been pretty much completely wiped off the map by the wildfires currently taking place in the state of California, and Donald Trump's somehow managed to make things so much worse with his visit. Not only did he embarrass the state of California by lying about their forest management capabilities, but then he decided to lie about the forest management in European countries... prompting, a lot of, uh, foreign backlash against Donald Trump, including a decent amount of mockery coming from the people of Finland. Here is what Donald Trump said to reporters after touring some of these fire ravaged areas. We've got to take care of the floors. You know, the floors of the forest. It's very important. You look at other countries where they do it differently and it's a whole different story.

I was with the president of Finland and he said, we're a forest nation. He called it a forest nation and they spend a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things and they don't have any problem. And when it is, it's a very small problem there. Raking trees, little trees like this, that or nut trees, little bushes that you could see are totally dry weeds and they're raking them. They're on fire. They should have been all raked out now. As everybody I'm sure could tell the, the, the thought process at the end of that sentence really just starts to fall apart. He's just naming things that he sees at the moment. We'll talk to you like the bush, the nut tree stuff on the ground. It's fire in the man is crazy. I mean, absolutely no question about it. This man is crazy. But let's get down to the real heart of the issue here.

Would raking the forest actually prevent these forest fires? Uh, all of the experts say absolutely not because here's the thing, we're. The wildfires are happening right now. They have also had wild fires in those areas since 2006. So the floor of the forest, the undergrowth, the dead trees that have fallen down and dried out, those have already burned up. That was not what fueled the fire here. Furthermore, in areas where they did come in and clear cut forests to prevent that from being used as fuel for wildfires, they still get wildfires, so every time they've tried to do this actually how rake out the forest or clear cut it or whatever it is, it doesn't stop the fires because Donald Trump and this administration and pretty much most politicians in DC, the ones that are already sworn in, not the ones that are coming in. Luckily we've got a fresh new class of people who understand the problem and the problem is climate change.

The problem is that California has been suffering through years of and there is no amount of raking, no amount of clear cutting you can do to prevent fires from happening when you one have negligent energy companies in the state of California, PG&E that has faulty equipment that constantly sparks these wildfires and to when everything is so dry that it can catch on fire like that. That's going to create a problem every time and the dryness, the drought, the lack of rainfall. All of that is directly related to climate change. Now, back to the international ridicule people from Finland or posting pictures all over social media, uh, one of them has a vacuum out in the forest saying, look, doing my duty to clear out the forest floor. Another one is holding a rake out there saying the same thing and they're using a Hashtag make America great again.