Ten days before his inauguration, the elected president of the United States lashes out at the management of an national emergency by Governor Gavin Newsom, who is emerging as one of his major Democratic rivals during his term.
Newsom and Trump have clashed time and again since Trump first came to power in 2017. For the elected president, progressive California embodies everything he detests: policies that promote diversity, environmental protection, and the fight against climate change, the use of electric vehicles, and the welcoming of immigrants.
The elected president’s attack was analyzed by CNN, which concluded that Trump’s accusations were false.
Here are the conclusions:
FEMA funding
Trump claimed on social media Wednesday that President Joe Biden is leaving him “NO MONEY IN FEMA.”
Facts First: Trump’s claim is false. Though FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund was depleted last year by a series of major disasters, Biden signed a bill in December that replenished the fund. “The current balance of the Disaster Relief Fund is approximately $27 billion,” FEMA told CNN in an email on Wednesday. That sum may well prove inadequate to meet the needs created by every disaster that ends up happening this year, but it’s not “no money.”
Newsom and a ‘water restoration declaration’
Trump blamed Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom for the wildfire crisis – claiming in a social media post that Newsom “refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way.”
Facts First: This is false. Newsom has never refused to sign a “water restoration declaration.” In fact, there is no such document, as Newsom’s office said on social media on Wednesday and experts on California water policy confirmed.
“There was no ‘water restoration declaration’ for him to sign,” Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow in the Water Policy Center at the Public Policy Institute of California think tank, said in a Wednesday interview.
“There was never a ‘water restoration declaration’ in California that the Governor refused to sign,” Brent Haddad, an environmental studies professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in a Wednesday email.
California water policy
In the same social media post, Trump continued that Newsom refused to sign the supposed declaration because the governor “wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California.”
Trump continued: “Now the ultimate price is being paid. I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA! He is the blame for this. On top of it all, no water for fire hydrants, not firefighting planes.”
Facts First: These Trump claims include exaggerations, inaccuracies and an overarching false narrative. Most notably, experts on California water policy said Wednesday that there is no basis for linking the existence of the Southern California fires or challenges in the firefighting effort to the water that is kept in the north of the state to protect the smelt and other species and ecosystems. Southern California does not have a shortage of water for fighting the fires.
Mount said Trump’s claims in the social media post don’t make “any sense” and that “none of it is true.” He said the debate related to water in the northern Delta “has nothing to do with the fires in Southern California. There’s nothing.”
The fire crisis was caused by a combination of exceptionally high winds and the exceptionally dry state of the hilly brushland in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, which has had minuscule rain for months. Trump’s proposals to send more water to Central Valley agricultural properties would not have shielded Los Angeles brushland that is not irrigated.
Other Trump inaccuracies
There are various other factual problems with Trump’s claims in the post.
Trump’s vague claim that there are “not firefighting planes” is untrue. Firefighting aircraft were back in operation over Los Angeles County on Wednesday, armed with water, after being temporarily grounded starting Tuesday night because of high winds.
The claim that there is “no water for fire hydrants” is an overstatement. Hydrants in other parts of Los Angeles County did have water even as the Pacific Palisades hydrants went dry.
Advocates of preserving the Delta smelt want more water, not “less,” for the Delta area where the species lives. And contrary to Trump’s suggestion, Newsom hasn’t stopped water from flowing into the state entirely.
War Begins: Trump Blames Newsom for Southern California Wildfires
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