Ground in california this afternoon, sticking to his one note when it comes to the fires, claiming lives and land and livelihoods in unprecedented numbers, claiming it all just comes down to Forest Management. Cleaning up the forest floor and something about exploding trees. Listen to this from the president today. There has to be good, strong Forest Management, which ive been talking about for three years with the state. So hopefully theyll start doing that. When trees fall down, after a short period of time, about 18 months, they become really dry, they become really like a matchstick and they get up you know, theres no more water pouring through and they become very, very they just explode. They can explode. I was talking the head of a major country. He said, we have trees that are far more explosive he meant explosive in terms of fire but we have trees that are far more explosive than they have in california and we dont have any problem, because we manage our forests. Paging sarah cooper. That talking point was fact checked moments later by one brave speaker at a briefing on the fires who tried to confront donald trump with science. We want to work with you to really recognize the changing climate and what it means to our forests and actually Work Together with that science. That science is going to be key. Because if we ignore that science and sort of put our head in the skpaand and think its a about vegetation management, were not going to succeed together protecting californians. Okay. It will start getting cooler. You just watch. I wish science agreed with you. Well, i dont think science knows, actually. So not only does donald trump continue to deny Climate Change, his administration has actively taken steps to work against climate reform. The New York Times also reports this, quote, nearly two years ago, federal government scientists concluded that Greenhouse Gas emissions from burning fossil fuels could triple the frequency of severe fires across the western states. But the president has used his time in the Nations Highest Office to aggressively promote the burning of fossil fuels. At the same time, mr. Trump and his senior environmental officials have regularly mocked, denied, or minimized the established science of humancaused Climate Change. The burning western United States and the president who brought a broom to the fight over Climate Change is where we start today, with some of our favorite reporters and friends. Former chief of staff for the cia and the department of defense, jeremy bash is here. Plus, White House Correspondent for pbs newshour, our friend, Yamiche Alcindor is back. And energy and Climate Change reporter for axios, amy harder is here. Amy, let me start with you. Can you take me through the view on the ground . Governor gavin newsom has been outspoken about the sort of fruitlessness of debating Climate Change at this point, but it does continue to damage his state. So just take me inside the ground truth. Right. Well, theres a lot of factors that influence what makes wildfires worse. And im tuning in here from seattle, washington, where weve been cloaked in wildfire smoke for the last few days. And soy really have a firstperson perspective on this. And theres several reasons why wildfires are getting worse. The president is actually correct that Forest Management is one of the factors, but so is Climate Change. Which is drying out the forest, which is making hotter temperatures, which is creating more drought, all of which feed into this pentup for that when fires are started, whether its by a bolt of lightning or humans, that fire is like a tinderbox. And it gets going and it ravages more places than it would have otherwise. So the president is focusing on just one factor, when its actually a lot of factors, including, most of all, climate chang change. Jeremy bash, i just want to ask you to broaden the lens for me. You go back to the hurricanes heading towards this country and donald trump took a sharpie skparand altered the path of a hurricane. I think it was weeks later, maybe months, that we learned that the scientists inside noaa had written to their superiors about just desperately trying to keep politics out of science. Theres example after example in the fight against covid. Weve got a whistleblower who was who left or was forced out because he refused to go on the hydroxychloroquine scam with donald trump and Rudy Giuliani and his friends at fox news. Theres example after example of donald trump pushing medical quackery. I mean, it is a very, very difficult moment to be on the side of science. Well, donald trump is waging a war, nicole, against science, against data, and against experts. And his m. O. , as bob woodward pointed out, is to downplay any threats. You see that playing out now with respect to the wildfires, consuming an area, i think the size of connecticut, in the western part of the United States. You saw trump downplaying threat from covid19. And of course, he took way too long to speak to it or acknowledge it. And even to this day, he continues to have mass sblees of people that can become super spreaders events. And with respect to the election, he consistently downplays t s foreign actors. So his first job in the constitution is to protect americans from certain threats. Yamiche, people in your line of work know that the president is very late to this rolling crises. California, oregon, and washington have been on fire for many, many days. This is the first event hes had on it. What does your reporting suggest about his personal degree of concern . Well, its hard to say what, of course, is in President Trumps heart. What i can say is he has been someone who has wanted to at least show that he is concerned about these fires. But he also is someone whose political career has really been founded on the idea that he knows even when Health Officials and Scientists Say otherwise. It goes to show you, when he was running, he talked about Climate Change being a hoax by the chinese, and now you see him as president rolling back environmental regulation after environmental regulation. He essentially says that hes on the side of business, not science and you hear him today saying essentially the same thing. There are a lot of critics for the president who would say, this is really par for the course. But as we look at the political ramifications, the president hasnt had to pay large consequences in his fight against science. It goes to show that, yes, hes in oregon, california, out west, talking about these fires, but has not been someone whos made his presidency being about being empathetic for people. Instead, hes been someone whos been hard charging and saying, i have the answer, everyone else is essentially wrong. Amy, let me show you governor gavin newsom on friday. Im a little bit exhausted that we have to continue to debate this issue. This is a climate damn emergency. This is real. And its happening. This is the perfect storm. Amy, he appeared in a forest at the Democratic National convention. His state has been hard hit by the two crises facing that region, coronavirus and the forest fires. What is sort of the view on the ground . Do people feel like the first issue that you talked about, Land Management is has been not up to par . Do people feel like Climate Change has been ignored. Or do people feel the way the whole country deals with these crises, it depends on their political camp . I think it certainly depends a lot on your political perspective. Unfortunately, Climate Change is the most polarizing issue, according to data from pew and gl gallup, so you really look at this issue through the lens of your political party. I think right now these wildfires are hitting blue states, and that is, of course, not going unnoticed by the way the president is handling his interactions with these states. I think there are some people here in Washington State, for example, that do acknowledge Climate Change, but also want there to be better Forest Management. And the problem with a problem like Climate Change is that it takes decades to occur and also reverse. Even if we stopped emitting Greenhouse Gases tomorrow, we would still have bad wildfires for decades to come. Which is why smart people, including people like governor inslee and other people on the ground, Governor Newsom of california, theyre they should take a twopronged approach, right . Address Climate Change, but also deal with things that they can do now, which is better management of the forest, more measured burning, and colder seasons, where the tinderbox isnt as present. So its really not either or. But when you get into the political arena, unfortunately, it boils down to whether or not you believe in Climate Change. And belief isnt even the word we should be using. The word is acknowledge. Because Climate Change is a science. So President Trump doesnt acknowledge the science of Climate Change. He doesnt theres no belief to be had here. And to amys point here, jeremy, hes filling his government with not nonbelievers, but nonaccepters. Not nonacknowledgers to use amys term. Heres a headline in the Washington Post, today noaa taps davitt legates. Donald trump retweeting this morning from an account of someone who dent accept the reality of Climate Change. Let me show you how joe biden is talking about this issue on the campaign trail. If we have four more years of trumps climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned in wildfires . How many suburban neighborhoods will have been flooded out . How many suburbs will have been blown away in superstorms . If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the white house, why would anyone be surprised if we have more america ablaze . I mean, jeremy, joe biden, i would say, is going on his third week of really trying to get himself and his campaign on the offense on all the crises facing this country. And this one, turning Donald Trumps fearmongering efforts about the suburbs on its head and pointing it back against donald trump. I think its a very sophisticated and accurate critique that the former Vice President launched against the president. Because, of course, the president would like to think of it through the rubric of what we were discussing, red state or blue state. But nicole, and youre from the barrier, you know, you know that the fire doesnt give a hoot whether or not you are republican or democrat or independent. It doesnt really care about your station in life. So these fires, these hurricanes, these floods are an equal opportunity destroyer. And the president who, yes, hes running for reelection, we get that, but hes also the president of the United States. He should act that way and look out for the best interests of all americans. You know, yamiche, jeremy is sort of hitting on this leadership argument. And i think that was the broader stroke that i noticed from joe biden. That joe biden is seeking to step in to every crisis where donald trump has decided, like jeremy just said, that the public will benefit them. And we can debate the strategies for how to deal with it, what americas role is in that, but it would seem that this is the third issue in three weeks that is a national crisis, an undeniable one for the vast majority of americans, but one that donald trump has been awol on. I think that what you see in the president is really him doubling down and really saying, what has worked for me in the past, what got me elected in 2016 is going to somehow also get me reelected in 2020. And the big question is, will he pay the consequence, a negative consequence, for questioning science, for not believing, acknowledging Climate Change, for not taking the virus seriously. For not acknowledging other things that are clearly threatening the United States. You talk to jeh johnson and others who think about National Security every day, and they will say that Climate Change is one of the number one or the number one National Security threat facing the United States and the world. But the president is essentially banking on the idea that if he fills his government with people who dont believe that, if he rolls back regulations and makes the argument that he is helping americans by somehow betting Energy Companies and Big Companies that dont also want to follow a lot of the regulations that the Obama Administrations and others put in place to try to protect america from Climate Change, that he will somehow benefit from that. So you see from joe biden is him really banking on the idea that people are going to take these issues seriously, theyre going to see Climate Change and see a whole state on fire. The biggest fire in californias history and say, we need a change and we need someone whos going to take this seriously. But i think fact that you see the president continuing to do what he did in 2016 and what hes done his whole president , it tells me that he either, one, is seeing numbers thats telling him, this is going to be working for him, or he doesnt know how to change, even if people around him are asking for him to change, hes just not doing so. Jeremy, i want to pick up on yamiches point about National Security. We know that jim mattis saw it in exactly that way, Climate Change as a National Security threat. There are other republicans, john kasich, and certainly evangelical voters across the ideological divide view Climate Change in a different way than i think donald trump thinks they do. Can you just talk a little bit more about what maybe and the New York Times has written about this. Donald trump is playing what he thinks republicans are. It is not a monolithic denial of Climate Change on the right. Hes really, again, microtargeting a sliver of it. And a generational sliver, at that. Nicole, inside the pentagon and inside the Intelligence Community, there is a consensus that Climate Change and its affects impact National Security and if were going to field capabilities or field troops to defend the United States, theyre going to have to be aware of things like rising sea levels. Obviously, the navy is very concerned about that. Of migration flows, which affects the stability of certain partner nations in europe and the middle east and africa and across the world. So the fact that Climate Change is out there, i think, is undeniable by National Security leaders. Yes, there can be a debate about what we should therefore do about Climate Change. But the fundamental facts that, the kind of consensus view inside the National Security establishment is that the president is way outside the main stream of National Security thought leaders on Climate Change. Amy harder, a quick last word. What do you think scientists thought when donald trump said, it will get cooler, just wait and watch . Well, i can tell you my reaction, and my reaction was twofold. It was, one, that hes going to be wrong. It also struck me the similarity between that phrasing and what he said about the coronavirus. He said, for weeks or even months that it was going to disappear. And of course, you know, the reality has proven that to be incorrect. Here, well be proven correct over decades that the temperature of the earth, which has already gone up, will continue to go up. But i will say that were getting into the fall and winter seasons, you can bet that the first really cold snap, and there will be a cold snap in the United States, because thats how Climate Change works, its still cold, that well get a tweet from the president , emphasizing that that is why Climate Change isnt real. Thats not how Climate Change works, but nonetheless, thats something that viewers should be aware of and understand that Climate Change means more ex