Trump criticized the California governor for prioritizing endangered fish over fighting wildfires
President-elect Trump has sparked a heated debate over whether Democrats should be blamed for the California wildfires after he accused Gov. Gavin Newsom of caring more about protecting an endangered fish species than protecting the state’s residents from wildfires.
The elected president has long opposed Democrats in California for limiting the availability of water for Californians that comes from the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers in the northern part of the state. He stuck to the issue during his 2016 campaign, and during his first term, Trump sought to divert more water from the delta where the two rivers meet, which is home to an endangered fish species known as minnows.
But Newsom and his administration have challenged that in court, arguing that opinions suggesting that diverting water won’t affect fish are wrong. Newsom has also previously opposed efforts to build a pipeline meant to divert water south. He oversaw programs in his state that annually release hundreds of billions of gallons of accumulated stormwater into the Sacramento-San Jaoquin River Delta to help slough habitat — instead of diverting the water south for use by people in the central and southern parts of the state.
Images of delta smelt being kept alive at the UC Davis Fish Conservation and Culture Lab Hatchery in Byron, California. (Randy Pench/Sacramento Bee/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Trump sparked a firestorm Wednesday when he called out Newsom on his Truth Social platform for wanting to “protect essentially worthless fish” instead of protecting the water needs of Californians. However, the comments are not new. Ahead of the November election, Trump made the point during an October interview with podcaster Joe Rogan.
“I was inside [California] farm country with some congressmen,” he told Rogan. “We’re driving down the highway and I’m like, ‘How come all this land is so barren?’ It’s farmland and it looked awful. It was just brown and bad. I said, ‘But there’s always that little corner that’s so green and beautiful.’ They said, ‘We have no water.’ I said, ‘Do you have a drought?’ ‘No, we don’t have a drought.’ I said, ‘Why don’t you have water?’ Because the water must not flow down. And in order to protect the little fish, the water in the north is directed into the Pacific Ocean. Millions and millions of gallons of water are spilling.”
Dried and cracked soil in an irrigation ditch next to a corn field on a farm in central California. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)
Devastating wildfires in California have killed at least five people and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes. The Palisades Fire alone has burned more than 17,000 acres of land, which is more than the island of Manhattan. The damage so far is estimated at tens of billions of dollars.
The president-elect’s claims were paired with reports that firefighters were running out of water as they battled the blaze, prompting the country to mobilize resources to replenish depleted supplies.
“There is no water in the Palisades. The water is not coming out of the fire hydrants. This is absolute mismanagement by the city. It’s not the firemen’s fault, it’s the city’s fault,” Rick Caruso, a billionaire developer who ran unsuccessfully against Karen Bass for mayor in 2022, told Fox News.
A California firefighter is battling a wild forest fire. (Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The governor’s press office said in response to Trump’s accusations that he was dead wrong, arguing that the president-elect is “conflating two completely unrelated things: the transfer of water to Southern California and the supply from local storage.”
“Generally speaking, there is no shortage of water Southern California right now, despite Trump’s claims that he would open some imaginary port,” Newsom’s office added.[The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power] he said because of the high demand for water, pumping stations at lower elevations did not have enough tanks to fill under pressure at higher elevations, and the ongoing fire prevented crews from accessing the pumps. In addition, they used water tenders to supply water – a common tactic in wildland firefighting.”
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Firefighters in California made progress in slowing the spread of the blaze Thursday, according to The Associated Press. Crews were reportedly able to extinguish a fire that broke out in the Hollywood Hills Wednesday night and have lifted evacuation orders for the area by Thursday. However, the fires are still raging, and most were reported to be only partially contained as of Thursday afternoon.
