Jan 9, 2025 10:39 AM
Rather than months without rain or the effects of climate change, figures like Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jr. are pointing to a familiar scapegoat as entire neighborhoods burn.
Photograph: Qian Weizhong/Getty
As wildfires raged out of control across the Los Angeles area on Wednesday, consuming over 28,000 acres of land, destroying thousands of homes and buildings including entire neighborhoods, and causing the deaths of at least five people, President-elect Donald Trump, his MAGA acolytes, right-wing commentators, conservative news outlets, and far-right conspiracists all laid the blame not on climate change or on eight months without rain, but on wokeism.
Trump—who supports vastly expanding the extraction and use of fossil fuels, which scientific consensus directly connects to the increasing prevalence of extreme weather events—used the unfolding tragedy to attack his long-time nemesis, California governor Gavin Newsom. He claimed that the Democrat’s embrace of environmental issues was to blame for the inability of the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) to contain what is already the worst fire in California’s history.
“Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California.”
The governor’s press office issued a statement Wednesday slamming Trump’s comment and pointing out that “there is no such document as the water restoration declaration—that is pure fiction.”
Democrats’ embrace of so-called woke policies has become an all-purpose bogeyman for the right in recent years. As in previous generations they blamed political correctness and affirmative action for various problems, after major events like the assassination attempt against Trump last July and the Baltimore Bridge collapse last March, they now routinely blame wokeism and diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI).
“Can we rename DEI to DIE since that’s what seems to happen to the people downstream of those who place woke virtue signaling far above competency?!?,” Donald Trump Jr wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday.
Trump confidant and centibillionaire X owner Elon Musk, never one to shy away from a conspiracy theory, was also using his platform to boost disinformation about what was to blame for the wildfires.
“DEI means people DIE,” Musk wrote in one post, while multiple other posts featured criticism of Kristin Crowley, the LAFD chief, a 22-year veteran of the department who was commended for saving nine homes from total destruction during the Woolsey Fire in 2018 alongside her wife.
Crowley is the first woman and first member of the LGBTQ community to hold the position of fire chief in LA.
Musk shared a post from Chaya Raichik, the woman behind the hate-filled, anti-LGBTQ account LibsOfTikTok: “Meet Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley. She boasts about being the first female and LGBTQ fire chief in the LA Fire Department. Promoting a culture of DEI is her priority. Does this make you feel safer?” The post has been viewed over five million times.
Musk was also willing to embrace even darker theories about the devastation. When uber-conspiracist Alex Jones posted claims that the fires were part of “a globalist plot to wage economic warfare” orchestrated as part of a scheme to deindustrialize the US, Musk, in a now deleted post, wrote, “True.”
(“Globalist,” as Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt has explained, originated as an antisemitic euphemism.)
Among the loudest voices targeting Crowley was Oscar-nominated actor-turned-MAGA firebrand James Woods, who posted a screenshot of the fire chief’s bio on X showing her promise to increase diversity in the department’s ranks.
“Refilling the water reservoirs would have been a welcome priority, too, but I guess she had too much on her plate promoting diversity,” Woods wrote, referencing news that some fire hydrants had run dry this week. According to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, this can be attributed to the unprecedented strain on its systems caused by the efforts to fight the blaze, as well as damage caused by the fire itself.
Woods, whose own home was destroyed in the fires, continued his attacks on Crowley during an interview on Fox News, saying that Crowley “took over and she put on her bio that her priority, ‘my highest priority,’ is inclusion, diversity and equity….and somebody forgot to fill all the reservoirs, I guess, with water.”
Other right-wing media figures also attacked Crowley, with former Fox News host Megyn Kelly telling her YouTube viewers that “In recent years LA’s fire chief has made not filling the fire hydrants top priority, but diversity.”
Matt Walsh, a podcaster on the conservative website the Daily Wire, wrote on X: “DEI is a cancer that destroys everything it touches.”
