People in Finland are raking President Donald Trump over the coals after his comments that the Scandinavian people regularly rake their country' forests to prevent fire, Time reported.
Trump praised what he called Finland's method for preventing catastrophic wildfires while he was viewing areas in California devastated by the worst fires in state history, the magazine reported.
Trump, after speaking with Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, said the Finns spend "a lot of time on raking and cleaning,'' the BBC reported.
Trump reiterated his claim that poor forest management was to blame for the California wildfires, the BBC reported.
"You look at other countries where they do it differently, and it's a whole different story," Trump said. "I was with the president of Finland, and he said: 'We have a much different (sic) … We're a forest nation.' And they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things, and they don't have any problem.”
Niinisto told a Finnish daily he could not remember talking about raking when the two met, the BBC reported.
Finland is an environmentally conscious country, but its citizens do not rake their forests to stop fires, The New York Times reported. Instead, officials rely on an early warning system, aerial surveillance and forest roads to keep wildfires in check, the newspaper reported.
Trump’s comments opened the gate for comments on social media, and people in Finland went outside in large numbers to rake leaves while mocking the president.
See some of the jokes tagged with the hashtags ""#RakeNews," "rake America great again," and "#Haravointi," Time reported.
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