President Trump announced on Friday that the United States has permanently solved the problem of wildfires by removing the forests, and offered to share the methodology with European nations currently experiencing what he described as “a very embarrassing situation with their trees.”
“Look at Spain. Look at Greece. Look at France, always burning,” the president said. “They have all these forests. Beautiful forests, everybody says so. And they burn. Every year. Do you know why? Because they have forests. We don’t have that problem. We took care of it.”
He then held up a chart. The chart was not shown to reporters.
“No trees, no fire,” he continued. “It’s very simple. It’s basic science, tremendous science, and nobody thought of it before. Scientists said it couldn’t be done. Now they’re saying I was right. They’re saying, sir, you were right about the trees.”
The Department of the Interior confirmed that the initiative, formally titled the Combustible Vegetation Reduction Programme, has been operating since March. Officials declined to specify how much forest remains but confirmed that the remaining trees have been “identified and are being monitored.”
The programme has encountered one complication. Following the removal of forest cover across several western states, the resulting grassland has proven highly flammable, producing what fire scientists describe as faster-moving and less predictable fires than the forests they replaced.
The administration has responded by expanding the programme to include grass.
“Grass burns. Nobody tells you that,” the president said. “The fake news won’t report it. Grass, bushes, the little plants, the ones with the flowers. All of it burns. We’re looking at all of it.”
A newly created office within the Department of the Interior has been tasked with cataloguing all remaining flammable material on federal land. Its preliminary report identifies 340,000 categories of combustible object and recommends “a phased approach beginning with things that are green.”
Asked whether removing all vegetation might present other environmental consequences, the president said that was “a different department” and that he was “focused on the fires, which are now zero, or close to zero, or will be zero very soon.”
He closed by offering to send American consultants to European capitals. “I told the Europeans, I said, you want to stop the fires? Call me. I’ll tell you what we did. They won’t call. They’re too proud. But when everything is burning, they’ll call.”
Spain, which is currently fighting wildfires across four regions, has not responded. The Spanish Ministry for Ecological Transition confirmed it had received no formal communication and had “no plans to remove Spain.”