Trump’s itinerary sets the tone for his nascent second administration, already in its fourth full day, as a more confident, defiant commander in chief compared to eight years ago.

Trump will travel to North Carolina and California on Friday to witness firsthand the devastation wreaked on those states by recent natural disasters, the floods last year in western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene and this month’s fires in and around Los Angeles, following strident criticism of the Biden administration and Golden State Democrats’ response.

Trump will then head to Nevada for a thank-you rally and is expected to speak about his no tax on tips campaign proposal in Las Vegas. The president won the battleground state over former Vice President Kamala Harris by 3 percentage points, or 46,000 votes, during last November’s election.

“First and foremost it’s the right thing to do, and it’s also smart politics,” Patrick Sebastian, a North Carolina pollster and political strategist, told the Washington Examiner. “Don’t be surprised if the president eviscerates the emergency responses led by Democratic governors and the Biden administration before unveiling his plan for an expedited recovery — all while those same Democratic governors have to stand next to him, smiling through gritted teeth for the cameras.”

White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement that Trump’s trip to North Carolina and California will “underscore his commitment to ensuring the return to normalcy and a united and effective response to natural disasters by the leaders entrusted to serve the American people.”

“In his first trip as President of the United States, President Trump is dedicating his time to be with the people of North Carolina and California in the wake of horrible natural disasters that have devastated far too many Americans,” said Kelly.

Trump has repeatedly used the Democratic response to the natural disasters against Biden, Harris, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), and Los Angeles City Mayor Karen Bass, including amplifying complaints that fish conservation efforts have exacerbated imbalances between how water is distributed from northern California to the rest of the state. After some LA County fire hydrants ran dry, Newsom and Bass have contended demand has been extremely high during this month’s fires, as five blazes burned across the region, but the issue has encouraged long-running tensions between farmers and environmentalists over scarce resources.

“I don’t think we should give California anything until they let the water run down,” Trump told Fox News on Wednesday night during his first Oval Office interview.

Trump reiterated the same opinion after his appearance with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Oracle‘s chief technology officer Larry Ellison, and Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son in the Roosevelt Room on his first full day in office during an exchange with reporters.

“Los Angeles has massive amounts of water available to it. All they have to do is turn the valve,” Trump said. “They wouldn’t do it because politically, they didn’t think it was good. I think it’s great politically. I think they’re dead politically. What they’ve done, they’ve destroyed the city.”

Trump argued California’s recovery endeavors, postponed in part as fires continue to burn, could be politically advantageous to him and Republicans as they seek to pass laws with slim majorities in the House and Senate, including a funding bill to keep the federal government open after March 15 and a reconciliation bill that would only require a simple majority in the Senate but has to be budget related, because “Democrats are going to be asking for help.”

Trump’s position prompted a sharp response from the Democratic National Committee. Spokesman Abhi Rahman criticized the president and his congressional allies for “seeing the suffering of wildfire victims as nothing more than a bargaining chip in their quest to make billionaires even richer.”

“Instead of providing help to the impacted families who need it most, Trump and Republicans want to play politics with disaster aid to appease their billionaire backers,” Rahman told reporters.

The DNC’s statement did not stop Trump from signing an executive memorandum on Inauguration Day called “Putting People over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California.” The memo directed the commerce and interior secretaries “to route more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the state for use by the people there who desperately need a reliable water supply.”

During the election, Trump attacked Harris for continuing to campaign and fundraise before and after Hurricane Helene. The former vice president eventually changed her schedule to return to Washington early for briefings and to take part in coordinating the response.

“People in western North Carolina were drowning in their houses this weekend. Others were losing everything. President Biden was at his beach house, and Vice President Harris was hosting political fundraisers on the West Coast. Is there a reason that they could not be here?” one reporter asked then-White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre at the time.

“The president did exactly what a president in this moment needs to do, which is directing his team to take action,” Jean-Pierre replied. “I talked about how the vice president also did her calls. She’s going to be going to the FEMA agency center to get her briefing later this afternoon.”

The Biden administration was also scrutinized over allegations it had politicized its response, prioritizing helping Democrats over Republicans, and disputed accusations that Federal Emergency Management Agency funds had been redirected from disaster relief to assisting illegal immigrants, in addition to that those affected would only receive $750 when that was an initial, upfront payment. FEMA employee Marn’i Washington was fired last November after it emerged that she advised her subordinates to avoid Trump supporter houses following threats made against staff amid the hotly-contested election.

Trump’s stop in North Carolina will be in Asheville, whereas his counterpart in California will be in Santa Monica.

After his Western state swing, Trump is anticipated to travel home to Florida for the weekend before a House Republican Conference meeting at Trump National Doral on Monday.