Rantz: Democrats blame Los Angeles fires on climate change to deflect from their own complicity

As lives are lost, homes and memories destroyed, heartless eco-radicals are using the deadly and destructive fires in Los Angeles to make some grand point about climate change. It’s as disgusting as it is strategic. Democrats immediately blame climate change for any disaster that they can because it covers up their own complicity

The cause of the fire is not known. But in typical fashion, the left-wing ghouls who wait at their keyboards for some tragedy to strike that they can exploit for political gain, immediately pounced as the Los Angeles fires raged in the Pacific Palisades, Altadena, and beyond. They ignore the facts as we know them, like a fire department that saw millions cut from its budget or that “scores of fire hydrants in Pacific Palisades had little to no water flowing out,” according to the Los Angeles Times. Instead, climate change is to blame.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) claimed to be “heartbroken” over the fires, before baselessly blaming the “devastation that’s continuously inflicted upon our country & the world” on “elected ‘leaders’ [who] are ignorant, impotent, or just incompetent to doing the smart thing, which is to acknowledge that climate change is real & start to solve it.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) posted an image of the fire on X and declared this a result of climate change, and used it as a way to criticize President-elect Donald Trump.

And of course, left-wing media jumped on the bandwagon. Without citing any evidence, ABC News declared, “Climate change has played a major role in the unprecedented wildfires that are raging through Southern California.” Left-wing journalist Eric Holthaus detailed in The Guardian that the “Los Angeles wildfires are climate disasters compounded.”

Governor Jay Inslee uses the Los Angeles fires to 1) seek credit for “working with Gov Newsom and helping CA”, and 2) attack President-elect Donald Trump for supposedly politicizing the fire by… politicizing the fire himself. https://t.co/wnLc8EzDRy

— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) January 9, 2025

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Are the Los Angeles fires a result of climate change or Democratic incompetence?

Democrats immediately blame climate change as a way to deflect from any blame for the Los Angeles fires. How much longer are we supposed to pretend the actual people in charge are somehow never to blame for anything?

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, a Democrat, would prefer you not focus on the December 4, 2024, letter from the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) chief Kristin Crowley to the Board of Fire Commissioners. In the letter she said the severe budget cuts by Democratic leaders created “unprecedented operational challenges” that have already “adversely affected the Department’s ability to maintain core operations.” She said the cuts meant the LAFD has been “severely limited” in its “capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies, including wildfires…”

Governor Gavin Newsom, who is always quick to blame climate change for fires in a state with lax forest management, hopes you don’t pay attention to former Los Angeles Department of Water and Power commissioner Rick Caruso and L.A. City Councilmember Traci Park who blasted the firefighting infrastructure.

“The chronic under-investment in the city of Los Angeles in our public infrastructure and our public safety partners was evident and on full display over the last 24 hours,” Park said. “I am extremely concerned about this. I’m already working with my team to take a closer look at this, and I think we’ve got more questions than answers at this point.”

Newsom and others are always quick to blame dry conditions on climate change, as if Los Angeles never suffered dry conditions until climate change became an issue for Democrats to exploit. What he doesn’t explain is why neither state or local officials do a very good job of removing the dry, dead brush.

Accepting no blame

You can argue climate change plays some role in the Los Angeles fires. And, I suppose we can completely ignore that Los Angeles County has somehow not adopted the very green technologies and policy shifts that were meant to mitigate the threats of these kinds of disasters.

But is it possible that budget cuts to the fire department is part of the reason the fire spread and is so out of control? Did the lack of water to put the fires out impact the spread at all? Did dry, dead brush that should have been cleared have any role in this fire?

Given that forecasts forewarned of a catastrophic windstorm, did Southern California Edison cut power where and when they needed to? Was this fire caused by a spark from an electrical line? It wouldn’t be the first time.

Shouting “climate change” shouldn’t mean Democrats get away without answering questions about decisions they made that are, unlike climate change, directly related to the Los Angeles fires. But as long as they’re able to get away with the deflections, more needless disasters like this will occur.

It’s all a political strategy

Democrats thrive politically by clinging to their overplayed climate change strategy. While they accumulate more power (and wealth), the rest of us are left to deal with the fallout.

They could tackle the real, underlying causes of these crises, but where’s the drama in that? It’s far more effective for them to posture as selfless heroes, claiming to save the planet from the so-called existential threat of climate change.

Of course, for their performance to land, they need a fiery backdrop—something burning as they defiantly vow to defeat Republicans and push their agenda of costly, ineffective green policies.

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