As 500,000 people in Oregon have been evacuated due to the wildfires, which have burned thousands of acres of federal land and are destroying national parks in the state, President Trump has not mentioned them once nor has he promised to send in federal agents to protect them.
Unlike a single courthouse in Portland, Trump’s reaction has been largely silence, as CNN notes. His only comment has been to berate the victims of the fires.
“They’re starting again in California,” he said at a mid-August rally. “I said, you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests — there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up.”
In contrast to his frequent and often inaccurate portrayals of the situation in Portland, Trump has not offered help for Oregon. In fact, waited a day to sign an emergency declaration request sent in by Oregon’s Democratic Governor Kate Brown. Brown’s request was sent on Wednesday; Trump spent Wednesday evening on the phone with Sean Hannity as the emergency request sat, unsigned, on his desk.