Jan 10, 2025:

Steve Schmidt is a political and corporate strategist who often posts commentary on the social media platform Substack.

Robert Reich, another political commentator who posts on Substack, re-posted a recent post by Schmidt regarding Trump and the L.A. wildfires.

Here's some of what Schmidt said:

Donald Trump has talked at length about his revenge.

It has begun. It is underway. It is happening. Right now. It's not in my head, and not in my imagination.

During the greatest crisis in the history of California en route to becoming the costliest natural disaster in American history, Donald Trump has offered snarling insults, veiled threats, misinformation and unrestrained malice.

He has used the disaster to attack the California governor, and has said nothing that matters of any consequence to the multitudes who are terrified and have lost everything.

Instead, like always, he has debased, inflamed and manipulated when he should have done the exact opposite. He seeks to gain from suffering, and incredibly, he doesn't even bother to hide it anymore. More than anything else, it is this revelation from his chaotic transition that is most bone-chilling.

Our president is Arthur Fleck deep down.

Somehow he has concluded that a firestorm that has devoured a geography larger than Manhattan, and is only six per cent contained, is good for him. Donald has decided it proves him right about something — if only any of us could know what that might be. It certainly has nothing to do with his idiocies around the Delta smelt, a small fish that is the subject of controversy hundreds of miles away, as it has been for more than 30 years.

The capitulant Wall Street media should cover the dishonesty and incoherence of Trump's inanity and insanity like the evil it is. Have no doubt, malice masks predation, and it is premeditated and purposeful. Trump looks at this disaster, and he sees one thing, and one thing only.

Opportunity.

He sees an opportunity to attack and weaken the enemy, which in his sick mind, is California.

The enemy is us.

Trump is happy today. Do you doubt it?

Over and over again, he has made clear what he wants to happen.

Trump despises California. He has made that clear enough.

Ten days from now, he will take command. What better way to pay back "Shifty Schiff" than by making his constituents suffer?

Why would anyone think anything else would happen?

In fact, just when California needs a mass deportation least, it's going to get one.

It's going to get it because common sense is in short supply around Donald Trump. Up in the thin air, where the stupid never takes a break, there will be no let up.

Delivering on this promise — long discounted by the media, which constantly asserts that he doesn't really mean it and can't possibly do it — he has been playing like Lucy does Charlie Brown for the last 10 years.

Nothing ever goes back.

Nothing burned to nothingness can be restored. Nothing.

The highrises built in Miami on the edge of the ocean are sinking into the sand. The waters are rising. The temperatures are becoming more extreme.

The hour long predicted has arrived.

It doesn't make it any easier to watch.

2025 is off to a brutal beginning in these United States, and it is going to get worse.

Defiance will be required, and more than anything, the faith to maintain it.

Source:

Reich, Robert. (January 10, 2025). "The Great Fire". Substack. Retrieved 2025-01-12

Read what FactCheck.org posted today regarding this issue here.

Read what FactCheck.org posted on November 8, 2019 regarding Trump's response to California wildfires here.