The claim: 

In each wildfire season since his inauguration, Trump has taken California to task for its “gross mismanagement of the forests,” often threatening the state’s federal funding if lawmakers here don’t take corrective action. Famously, at a 2018 press conference in Paradise after the Camp Fire tore through the town killing dozens, he insisted that the state should do more to “take care of the floors” of the forest and pointed to Finland as a shining example: “They spend a lot of time raking and cleaning.”

He repeated the line this year, with large swaths of northern California engulfed in flames. “You gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests,” he told campaign rally-goers in Pennsylvania. “Maybe we’re just going to have to make them pay for it because they don’t listen to us.”

California’s sanctuary policies are illegal and unconstitutional and put the safety and security of our entire nation at risk. Thousands of dangerous & violent criminal aliens are released as a result of sanctuary policies, set free to prey on innocent Americans. THIS MUST STOP!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2018

The facts:

To get the low-hanging fruit out of the way: Finland does not have a policy of forest-raking. 

But while the Paradise press conference elicited much snickering and trolling from Americans and Fins alike, the president was onto something. Many experts acknowledge that along with climate change, poor forest management is a prime reason for California’s increasingly severe wildfires. For generations, public land managers have prioritized putting out wildfires as quickly as possible, with little emphasis on forest thinning or controlled burns. (Though this is starting to change). As a result, shrubs, dead trees and saplings have built up across the American west as so much kindling.

But here’s the rub: The state only manages 3% of the state’s forests. The federal government is responsible for more than half.

Learn more about California’s endemic wildfire problem here.