President-elect Donald Trump told NBC News "Meet the Press" host Kristen Welker in a phone interview Saturday that he may travel to California next week to view the devastation in the greater Los Angeles area The aftermath of wildfires.

"I'll probably be inaugurated this weekend," Trump said, just two days before he is set to be inaugurated for a second term.

"In fact, I was going to go yesterday," the president-elect added, "but I thought it would be better if I went as president. I suspect that would be more appropriate."

Trump's planned visit comes days after wildfires raged across Southern California, destroying homes and businesses and displacing residents.

Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, invited Trump to the state to view the damage, and Trump took to social media to criticize Newsom, President Joe Biden and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass launched a series of escalating attacks.

In the first big day of disruption, Trump attacked Newsom on TruthSocial, baselessly claiming the governor had blocked a plan he proposed during his first term to move water from Northern California to Southern California .

“Governor Gavin Newscum refuses to sign a water restoration declaration put before him that would allow millions of gallons of water (from excess rain and snowmelt from the north) to flow daily into many areas of California , including areas currently burning in an almost apocalyptic manner," Trump wrote, using Newsom's insulting epithet.

In that post, Trump added that Newsom “wants to protect an essentially worthless smelt by giving them less water to drink (which doesn’t work!)” and that “He is the one doing this The culprit.”

"There's no water in the fire hydrants and no money from FEMA. That's what Joe Biden left me with. Thanks Joe!" Trump wrote in another post that seemed to lean toward FEMA. He and other Republicans spread false conspiracy theories after several hurricanes in the South last year.

In a TruthSocial post later this week, Trump even blamed the wildfire devastation on "the gross incompetence of Gavin Newscomb and Karen Bass."

Newsom responded to Trump in an interview on NBC News' "Meet the Press" last week, saying it would take "another month" to "respond to Donald Trump's insults."

"I'm very familiar with them. Every elected official he disagrees with is very familiar with them," he added.

Trump "is somehow linking delta lava to this fire, which is inexcusable because it's inaccurate. And it's incomprehensible to anyone who understands the state's water policy," New York said. Thumm added.

The governor also said he believes the wildfires will become one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history.

"I think it just has to do with the cost and the scale and the scope involved," Newsom said.

Now, on the weekend before his second inauguration, Trump says he has not spoken directly to Newsom since the wildfires began.

Asked if he planned to include California disaster relief on his list of Day 1 priorities, Trump said: "We will, no, we will look at it from a lot of angles. We are putting requirements in place to move water from the north into California. The lower part of the state.”

In 2020, a dispute first broke out between Trump and California officials over releasing water from the northern part of the state to the southern part.

Then-President Trump signed a presidential memorandum seeking to divert water from northern California to farmland in the central and southern parts of the state.

"(It will) give you a lot of water, a lot of dams, a lot of everything. You're going to be able to farm your land, you're going to be able to do things you never thought were possible," Trump said in California in 2020 said a state event announcing the memorandum.

At the time, Newsom and then-California Attorney General Xavier Becerra publicly condemned Trump's plan, with Becerra calling it a "harmful attack on our state's critical ecosystems and environment."