Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said Monday that California doesn’t “deserve” funding after wildfires unless they “make some changes.”
“If you go to California, you run into a lot of Republicans, a lot of good people, and I hate it for them, but they are just overwhelmed by, by these inner-city woke policies with the people that vote for them,” Tuberville said on Newsmax’s “The Chris Salcedo Show,” in a clip highlighted by Mediaite.
“And it … you know, I don’t mind sending them some money. But unless they show that they’re [going to] change their ways and get back to building dams and storing water, doing the — the maintenance with the brush and the trees and everything that everybody else does in the country, and they refuse to do it, they don’t deserve anything, to be honest with you, unless they show us they’re [going to] make some changes,” he added.
The recent Los Angeles-area fires have devastated the region, destroying property en masse and leaving a death toll in the double digits in their wake.
On Sunday, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) predicted “that there will be strings attached to money that is ultimately approved” for Los Angeles-area fire aid.
“Do you expect, though, that Congress and Republicans will still help these Americans in need, even if they don’t like their local politics in the party?” CBS News’s Margaret Brennan asked Barrasso on “Face the Nation.”
“I expect that there will be strings attached to money that is ultimately approved, and it has to do with being ready the next time, because this was a gross failure this time,” the Wyoming Republican responded.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) raised concerns in an interview that aired Sunday about the chance of President-elect Trump withholding federal disaster aid to the Golden State during the deadly fires.
“He’s done it in Utah. He’s done it in Michigan, did it in Puerto Rico. He did it to California back before I was even governor, in 2018, until he found out folks in Orange County voted for him and he decided to give them money,” Newsom said in the interview.
