Trump Doesn’t Understand California Water, Fish or Wildfires
The state has to spend untold dollars and lawyer-hours to keep the president’s misinformation from warping its reality.
Not seeing eye to eye since at least 2018.
Photographer: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
If President Donald Trump’s claims about California water management are to be believed, then there is a basically a giant faucet in the north of the state that could unleash a welcome deluge on the south, refilling reservoirs and fire hydrants and soaking the arid land. But Governor Gavin Newsom refuses to turn on the faucet because he wants to save what’s left of a species of fish that is essentially garbage.
Not a single word of the preceding sentence is true, even in a metaphorical sense. The fact that California — which has more than enough on its plate already — now has to spend untold dollars and lawyer-hours to keep Trump’s nonsensical words from warping the state’s reality is a taste of what’s to come in a presidency that approaches everything, including the climate crisis, from a position of grievance and misinformation.