Touring Paradise, California, after the deadly Camp Fire on Nov. 17, 2018, Trump said, “You gotta take care of the floors. You know? The floors of the forest. Very important.” He said Finland's president had told him Finland was “a forest nation” and that Finns “spend a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things, and they don't have any problem.”
Finnish President Sauli Niinistö told the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat that he and Trump had discussed the California fires and Finland's forest surveillance system in Paris, and that he told Trump “we take care of our forests,” but he could not recall raking coming up. Finns mocked the remark online with photos of themselves raking.
Experts told FactCheck.org that neither the Camp Fire nor the Woolsey Fire was a true forest fire, that wind was the presiding factor, and that dry, hot conditions exacerbated by climate change made the fires possible. Finland does not rake as a fire-prevention method, and raking would not have prevented the California fires.
Correction (October 14, 2026): A dead CBS video link was replaced with Associated Press coverage. The earlier version stitched an unsourced phrase (“they don't do any forest management”) onto Trump's quote; it now matches CBS News's transcript. It also said Niinistö “denied ever saying this”; he said he could not recall raking coming up. The claim that “forestry experts” were “baffled” was replaced with what experts told FactCheck.org.