Kevin O’Leary: Why I Disagree with Gavin Newsom on Linking Los Angeles Wildfires to Climate Change

Multi-millionaire entrepreneur and Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary is making a bold prediction about California Governor Gavin Newsom’s likely response to the devastating fires currently sweeping through Los Angeles. O’Leary is determined that Newsom won’t be able to evade taking responsibility for the destruction.

‘You can’t attribute all of this to climate change. That’s the excuse Newsom will probably attempt to use,’ O’Leary stated in an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail. He anticipates that the environmentally conscious Democrat governor will seek to find a scapegoat to justify the state’s failure in preventing this catastrophe.

Instead, O’Leary says there’s just one thing to blame: ‘It’s just poor management on [Newsom’s] behalf.’

With at least six fatalities and numerous injuries reported in Southern California due to the five ongoing fires in the region, the Sheriff of LA County has grimly warned that the number of casualties is expected to increase.

‘This is a horrific outcome, loss of life, loss of everything else, loss of property,’ O’Leary added.

The estimated economic costs of the ongoing disasters are already as high as $50 billion, meaning these wildfires are well on their way to becoming the most financially destructive in US history.

According to O’Leary, much of the devastation was preventable.

O’Leary says there’s just one person to blame: ‘It’s just poor management on [Newsom’s] behalf.’ (Pictured: Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and CA Governor Gavin Newsom in the Pacific Palisades on January 8)

Multi-millionaire entrepreneur and ‘Shark Tank’ star Kevin O’Leary predicts Newsom will try to shrug off responsibility for unimaginably destructive fires ravaging Los Angeles. But O’Leary won’t allow it.

‘It’s just bad forest management,’ he said, ‘you have to manage the dry brush or it’s just a matter of time before nature does its regular fire, cleans all that out and starts again.’

Indeed, investigations by California-based media outlets have repeatedly critiqued Newsom for failing to deliver on his promises to clear dry brush, which forestry experts say reduce wildfire risks.

One 2021 investigation accused the governor of inflating – by a whopping by 690 percent – the amount of land he claimed his administration had treated with fire suppression methods.

‘You either have to burn the brush off, as many other jurisdictions do all around the world on an occasional basis in a controlled fire, or the fire controls you, which is what happens in California all the time and destroys a lot of property and even worse lives,’ O’Leary told the Mail.

O’Leary’s devastating review of Newsom echoes some of the criticism leveled against the Democrat by President-elect Donald Trump, who has focused on the failure of the water system used the LA fire department.

‘Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social Wednesday.

‘On top of it all, no water for fire hydrants, not firefighting planes. A true disaster!’

Newsom’s communications director, Izzy Gardon, denied Trump’s accusations and called them ‘pure fiction.’

But when it comes to accountability, Newsom has largely thrown his hands up.

O’Leary’s devastating review of Newsom echoes some of the criticism leveled against the Democrat by President-elect Donald Trump.

When pressed Wednesday night over the fact that hydrants in the city ran dry as firefighting teams attempted to use them, Newsom said, ‘Look, the local folks are trying to figure that out. Those hydrants are typically for two or three fires, maybe one fire, not something of this scale… but again, that’s gonna be determined by the locals.’

To O’Leary, that response just doesn’t cut it.

‘If [Newsom] was working in the private sector I would have fired him a long time ago,’ the Montreal-born entrepreneur said.

‘He’d never make it. He would have been fired everywhere. Every job he had. That guy couldn’t manage a corner store, a bodega. He’s terrible.’

He called out Newsom for incentivizing the use of electric cars in his pursuit of net-zero carbon emissions by 2045 while neglecting traditional infrastructure.

Now those EVs and their owners are being caught up in the devastation.

‘The lithium batteries are catching fire, and you can’t put a lithium battery out,’ O’Leary said, in reaction to video of abandoned Telsas left along evacuation routes after drivers were forced to run for their lives.

In all, O’Leary says Newsom’s leadership is crippling the state:

‘Gavin Newsom, I’ve been saying for two years, is a walking disaster for that state… Sooner or later, people will say, ‘He’s made it unbearable. The taxes are the highest in the nation. The service is the lowest. And then there’s these fires.’

‘Newsom is taking California to its knees, and slowly but surely people are leaving for all different reasons, and certainly business already left a long time ago,’ he said.