Finns have taken President Donald Trump to task over his wild assertion that their “forest nation” avoids deadly blazes by spending “a lot of time on raking and cleaning.”
“You’ve got to take care of the floors. You know the floors of the forest, very important,” Trump said Saturday during a tour of the destruction left in the wake of the Camp fire.
The president then recounted an alleged conversation with Finnish President Sauli Niinistö in which he was told about the benefits of raking.
“And they don’t have a problem,” Trump said. “And when they do, it’s a very small problem.”
On Sunday, Niinistö said that he doesn’t recall raking ever coming up during his brief interaction with Trump earlier this month.
While critics at home have pointed out the many extreme differences between the climates of California and Finland (a quarter of which lies within the Arctic Circle), the Finns have hilariously responded to Trump’s suggestion on social media.
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