This vile excuse for a human being was still politicizing the California wildfires during a speech following him signing more executive orders, this time aimed at protecting the coal industry. As we discussed here, those fires took our own John Amato's home earlier this year, and Trump wasted no time politicizing the issue and attacking Gov. Gavin Newsom in the immediate aftermath.
Trump also pulled a stunt where he wasted billions of gallons of irrigation water while pretending he was doing something to help:
Under orders from Donald Trump, billions of gallons of irrigation water were laid waste in California’s thirsty agricultural hub this month, a move that left water experts shocked and local officials scrambling.
The water, stored in two reservoirs operated by the army corps of engineers, is a vital source for many farms and ranches in the state’s sprawling and productive San Joaquin valley during the driest times of the year. It will be especially important in the coming months as the region braces for another brutally hot summer with sparse supplies.
The reservoirs are also among the few the US president can control directly.
Staged to give weight to Trump’s widely debunked claims that flows could have helped Los Angeles during last month’s devastating firestorm and to show that he holds some power over California’s water, he ordered the army corps to flood the channels. Less than an hour of notice was reportedly given to water authorities down-river who rushed to prepare for the unexpected release, which threatened to inundate nearby communities.
The move is just the latest in a series of misinformed attempts Trump has made to wade into California’s water wars, adding new challenges and conflicts over the state’s essential and increasingly scarce water resources. But in what now appears to be just a political stunt, Trump has struck some of his strongest supporters. Many counties across California’s rural Central valley – home to much of its roughly $59bn agricultural industry – backed Trump in the last election, forming a red strip at the heart of the blue state.
The dangerous clown was still bragging about what he did this Tuesday, and someone let me know if they can make any sense of half of this, because I sure as hell can't.
TRUMP: Earlier this afternoon, I signed another executive order to strengthen our electric grid by ensuring that coal-fired power plants are always available to meet surging demand for electricity.
Unlike wind and solar, coal plants can run 24 hours a day in rain, sleet, or snow, and you will not be subject to the incredible blackout situation that's taking place in California where they have blackouts all the time.
It's an amazing thing with California. They have blackouts and brownouts at levels that nobody's ever seen before, and all they want to do is keep going the way they're going, and they're doing a very poor job.
As you probably heard, I released billions of gallons of water going in from upstate California from the most northern parts of California probably comes in from Canada to a certain extent.
Thank you very much, Canada. We appreciate it and, I released it. It was being sent out to the Pacific Ocean.
I've been working on Gavin and some of the politicians for years, and they didn't want to do that because they were protecting a smelt... a fish that was perhaps in trouble, but it's not unique to that area.
And because of that you had numbers, you had fires nobody's ever seen anything like what happened. Think of what it would have been like if you had fire hydrants that had water in them. If you had sprinkler systems in houses, a lot of these luxury houses where they had beautiful sprinkler systems, there was no water.
They had no water to put out the fires. Water is very good for putting out fires, you know, they just didn't learn it, but we now have millions of gallons, billions actually they say of gallons of water pouring into, into California from the Pacific Northwest... I guess I would say mostly Pacific Northwest, but other parts of of the northern sections of California and beyond and it's a beautiful thing to see.
I saw a picture of it this morning. The water's just flowing down there. I said, why didn't they do this?
I told them to do it my first term, I said do it and I don't know. I think the second term is just more powerful. They do it. When I say do it they do it. Right?
And we actually had to do some pretty strong things to get them to open it up. They had think of this, they had all that water pouring out right into the Pacific.
They had a big valve like a giant valve as big as this room. And they turned the valve, takes 1 day to turn it, and they face it toward the Pacific Ocean and the water all that was coming down, all millions and millions of gallons coming down.
They put it into the Pacific Ocean, which for the Pacific Ocean is like a drop of water, but for California it would have been unbelievable.
So, we did I'm very proud of the fact that we did it we did that against a lot of, a lot of heat and a lot of environmental nonsense.
Someone needs to drug test him.