Trump Uses Los Angeles Fires to Complain About Real Estate Values

“And I said to Trudeau, I said, ‘Why are, why are we subsidizing you 200 a—250 billion dollars a year? And he said, ‘I really don’t know.’ And I said, ‘Well, I don’t know either.’ I said, ‘What would happen to Canada if we didn’t?’ He said, ‘Canada would be obliterated.’ I said, ‘Well, then Canada should be a fifty-first state.’”

Canada has actually been helping fight the fires all week through the use of water bombers operating around Los Angeles. One Canadian “Super Scooper” aircraft, two of which are loaned annually to the U.S., was grounded Thursday after colliding with a civilian drone—resulting in a loss of more than 1,500 gallons of ocean water per flight that could have been dropped on active fires.

But Trump doesn’t think we need any help at all. Take lumber, for example, an industry of which Trump clearly has a highly technical understanding: “We don’t need Canada for lumber ’cause we have big forests, that we have, you know, not utilized. In some cases they’re protected, which I can take that protection off. And you can take down that tree and grow a better tree. And you know that’s pretty common.”