Earlier this month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom publicly asked for help and support from United States President Donald Trump as the city of Los Angeles looks to rebuild and recover from the devastating wildfires in preparation for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. But it sounds like Donald Trump is threatening to withhold that support.
Earlier this month, Gavin Newsom praised Donald Trump for helping secure the 2028 Olympics for Los Angeles, saying that it was “an opportunity for him to shine” as the city now prepares for the major world event after the devastating 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.”
However, during a recent interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Donald Trump threatened to withhold aid
“I don’t think we should give California anything until they let water flow down,” Trump said during the interview.
Trump was repeating a false claim that Newsom and other California public officials have refused to allow water from the northern part of the state to flow down into the Los Angeles area and are 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.”
However, Southern California does not get its water from Northern California, and experts have repeatedly explained that the devastation caused by the Southern California fires was not a result of a lack of water in the reservoirs or a lack of water flowing from Northern California.
As Jay Lund, a University of California, Davis, a professor emeritus who has studied water resources and environmental engineering, pointed out, there was plenty of water to fight the fires. The problem is that strong winds made it impossible to fly the planes and helicopters that are typically used to get wildfires under control.
“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,” he said.
Still, Trump went on to suggest that there is water available to Los Angeles through the Pacific Northwest – the Washington and Oregon area – but that this water is controlled by a “valve” and it has been rerouted to the Pacific Ocean by this “valve.”
“Los Angeles has massive amounts of water available to it,” he said in a news 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.”
But this, once again, is completely untrue.
There’s no “valve” to regulate water from the Pacific Northwest. Californians have previously floated the idea of constructing a pipeline from Oregon and Washington to bring water to the state, but the concept of transporting water over vast distances and through towering mountain ranges has consistently been seen as far too expensive.
Trump’s claims are so far from reality that experts have found it difficult to even discern what he’s 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.”
Trump appears to be threatening to withhold aid to California unless the state leaders “let water flow down.” But it’s not even clear what he means since California does not need water to fight the fires and there isn’t even a “valve” like he suggests in the first place.
