Earlier this month, California Governor Gavin Newsom publicly sought support from United States President Donald Trump to aid Los Angeles in recovering from the devastating wildfires as the city prepares for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. However, Trump is not making it easy as he continues to spread misinformation about the entire situation.
Gavin Newsom had previously praised Trump for his role in securing the 2028 Olympics for Los Angeles, saying that it was “an opportunity for him to shine” as the city works toward hosting the global event and recovering from the wildfires.
“President Donald Trump was helpful in getting the Olympics to the United States of America — to get it down here in LA. We thank him for that. This is an opportunity for him to shine, for this country to shine, for California and this community to shine,” Newsom said earlier this month.
“That’s why we’re already organizing a Marshall plan. We already have a team looking, reimagining LA 2.0, and we’re making sure everyone’s included.”
Despite these comments from Newsom, Trump suggested during an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News that he might choose to withhold aid from California – and he spread some clear misinformation in the process.
“I don’t think we should give California anything until they let water flow down,” Trump said during the interview.
This statement from Trump parroted a baseless claim that Newsom and other California officials were deliberately preventing water from the northern part of the state from flowing to Los Angeles, instead releasing it into the Pacific Ocean.
“Look, Gavin’s got one thing he can do,” Trump said according to the New York Times. “He can release the water that comes from the north. There is massive amounts of water, rainwater and mountain water, that comes, too, with the snow, comes down as it melts, there’s so much water, they’re releasing it into the Pacific Ocean.”
The problem with Trump’s statement is that Southern California does not rely on Northern California for its water supply, and experts have consistently made it clear that the recent wildfire devastation was not due to a lack of water in reservoirs or the inability to get it from Northern California.
Jay Lund, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Davis, specializing in water resources and environmental engineering, made it clear that there was plenty of water available to combat the fires. Instead, strong winds made it impossible to deploy the aircraft typically used to control wildfires.
“There was enough water in storage in Southern California to drown the fire-affected areas in 20 feet of water, but you couldn’t get it to those places,” Lund said.
Trump also claimed that water from the Pacific Northwest — specifically from Washington and Oregon — was accessible to Los Angeles but had been redirected to the Pacific Ocean via a supposed “valve.”
“Los Angeles has massive amounts of water available to it,” Trump said during a press conference on Tuesday. “All they have to do is turn the valve, and that’s the valve coming back from and down from the Pacific Northwest, where millions of gallons of water a week and a day, even, in many cases, pours into California, goes all through California down to Los Angeles. And they turned it off.”
These claims are entirely false.
There is no “valve” to regulate water flow from the Pacific Northwest. While there have been discussions in the past about constructing a pipeline from Oregon and Washington to bring water to California, such a project has consistently been dismissed as far too expensive due to the vast distances and rugged terrain involved.
In fact, this statement from Trump was so inaccurate that some experts didn’t even seem to understand what he was trying to say.
“It’s difficult to explain what he’s talking about because nobody knows what he’s talking about,” said John Buse, general counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group. “The idea of a valve and water will just flow is preposterous.”
Clearly, Trump’s words are not grounded in reality.
