Oscar Murdock, my sainted father, does not wear his heart on his sleeve. At age 92, he is beyond such sentimentality. Instead, every day, he affixes a beer-coaster-sized button to his shirt. It reads: “Trump Was Right.” What I treasure most about that item is its subtlety.

The Palisades, Hurst, and Eaton fires blaze out of control at 1:40 p.m. PT on Jan. 8, 2025 (NASA Earth Observatory)
That pin has been heart-breakingly accurate since Jan. 7. That morning, multiple blazes began ripping through greater Los Angeles, my birthplace. The Palisades Fire (in Malibu, Pacific Palisades, and Topanga Canyon) and the Eaton Fire (Altadena and Pasadena) finally became 100 percent contained — on Friday! For 24 continuous days, these fires forced 200,000 evacuations, leveled these communities, and terrorized the nation.
Chart by Deroy Murdock on Feb. 3, 2025 (Wikipedia)
The Palisades Fire incinerated 23,448 acres and 7,854 structures — mainly single-family homes and businesses. The Eaton Fire engulfed 14,021 acres and 10,491 structures. Include the Hughes, Border 2, Kenneth, and Hurst outbreaks, and just these six conflagrations killed 29, annihilated 18,345 structures, and reduced 56,380 acres to ash. This equals 88 square miles. This land area totals four Manhattan Islands or just more than the 84 square miles of Seattle, Washington.
Before Jan. 6, 2025 (NASA Earth Observatory)
After Jan. 14, 2025 (NASA Earth Observatory)
This mayhem’s financial toll? AccuWeather forecasts losses between $250 billion and $275 billion.
Who saw this coming?
Donald J. Trump.
Throughout his first term, Trump repeatedly begged California’s Governor Gavin Newsom and other boneheaded Democrats to reduce vegetation and increase water storage and infrastructure, to prevent and, if necessary, defeat the flames. Here are Trump’s relevant remarks through the fall of 2020:

“There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions o...