STEPHANIE RUHLE (HOST): So let's walk through exactly what's happening here because as the worst wildfire in California's history is ripping through the state, President Trump has been lobbing blame and a whole lot of threats. But “For Facts Sake,” let's look at his claims with a little help from our colleagues at The New York Times. On Saturday, the president tweeted this, quote, “There is no reason for these massive, deadly, and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor.” But this claim, it is misleading at best. First off, they're not even forest fires. The Camp and Woolsey fires started in an area called the wildland-urban interface. It's where communities bump up against undeveloped land, which makes it easier for a fire to devastate neighborhoods so quickly.

Later in that tweet, the president continued, quote, “Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments.” Again, that is misleading to put it mildly, since it seems to imply that California has been doing a bad job managing its forests. But California, the state of California, only owns and manages 3 percent of the forests in the state. Fifty-seven percent is owned and managed by federal agencies like the Department of the Interior, and another 40 percent is owned by either private citizens, Native tribes, or companies.



And then, there's the president's tweet as a whole, saying forest management is the only reason. That right there is false; it's a lie. The Los Angeles County fire chief stated very clearly, “This is climate change.” The president might not want to acknowledge the seriousness of a warning on our planet or our responsibility to help curb the temperature rise, but the facts and data are there from his own administration. This chart on your screen from NASA showing the increasing rise of global temperatures since the Industrial Revolution.