Newsom and Trump face off from a distance as Los Angeles fires burn

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

82% : "Trump is incredibly adept at understanding that.
64% : People who have spoken to Newsom say he sometimes falls back on over-analyzing how he sees Trump playing a chess game with him now and in the run-up to the next presidential election.
61% : As for the possibility of trying to tie the aid to a budget bill that provides tax breaks for billionaires, Padilla said that is "offensive and insulting not just to me, but to the families that are struggling and hurting right now in Southern California.
58% : "As Newsom waits to hear from the White House whether he will even be invited to be with Trump - the president said on Wednesday in an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity that he hadn't even thought about that - his staff planned an event in Pasadena for Thursday to sign a $2.5 billion relief package approved by the state legislature.
52% : Others tell him to just kiss up more to Trump.
50% : "President Trump said the federal government is going to be there for the folks in L.A.
48% : He knows Democrats far beyond California are watching how this dynamic with Trump goes - both those, like him, expected to start exploring 2028 presidential runs, and those who are just trying to pick up the pieces of their party now in 2025.
47% : Calvert said he believes Trump, as a newly charged president who came out of real estate himself, might be just the right partner, if they can figure out a way through.
46% : And the timing and the Santa Ana winds have turned the governor into the first test case for how Democrats and others whom Trump perceives as political opponents manage relationships that tend to start with the personal and petty, wend through misinformation, and rarely evolve into more.
46% : "Part of working with Trump and his administration is managing his ego and the political jabs, but ultimately we have work to do and a responsibility to Californians," Alex Padilla, the state's senior senator and a Newsom ally, told CNN.
41% : Trump and allies blame protections for fish and diversity hiring for the situation; Newsom and allies point out how he doubled the number of California firefighters and organized the planes (some of which were delayed in arriving years ago by the first Trump administration).
37% : And Newsom knows Trump wants to make an example of him too.
34% : It's hard to move forward when the conversation always starts with Trump referring to "Newscum.
29% : Friday morning, after being told Schiff declined, Trump said as he was leaving the White House, "I didn't invite him.
29% : When he landed in Asheville to survey hurricane damage, Trump said his conditions for California would also include the state implementing new voter ID laws -- reflecting his longstanding obsession with claims of illegal voting, which he has consistently blamed for his three losses in the blue state.
28% : And Trump has continued saying things about the fires that are not true, both with his own social media posts and Tuesday in the Roosevelt Room, including claiming of Beverly Hills, "a lot of them are wiped out," though the fires never reached that neighborhood.
25% : As Trump led Republicans into making this a fight about aid, though, they've seen an opportunity to try to claim some higher moral and political ground.
25% : "I don't think we should give California anything until they let water flow down into their system," Trump told Hannity, making an argument he repeated as he left for his trip to North Carolina on Friday morning.
20% : In his interview with Hannity, Trump used another argument to explain why disaster aid should be conditioned.

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