{"id":5823,"date":"2025-02-06T12:20:16","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T12:20:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trump-claims-victory-after-ordering-california-to-open-dams-150-miles-from-l-a-fires\/"},"modified":"2025-02-06T12:20:16","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T12:20:16","slug":"trump-claims-victory-after-ordering-california-to-open-dams-150-miles-from-l-a-fires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trump-claims-victory-after-ordering-california-to-open-dams-150-miles-from-l-a-fires\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump claims \u2018victory\u2019 after ordering California to open dams 150 miles from L.A. fires"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is an adapted excerpt from the <\/em>Feb. 4<\/em><\/a> episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”<\/em><\/p>\n

During the devastating wildfires last month in Los Angeles, Donald Trump repeatedly insisted<\/a> that officials in California, including the state’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, were somehow hoarding water instead of using it to fight the raging fires.<\/p>\n

Water pressure was the primary issue, rather than a lack of supply, according to fire officials and water experts who spoke to CNBC. <\/p>\n

“They don’t have water,” Trump told reporters during a Jan. 8 visit to Capitol Hill. <\/a>“[T]he water comes from, you know where? Up north and it comes down at levels — they give millions and millions of barrels of gallons of water that they have and they send it out into the Pacific. For the Pacific, it’s like a drop. It’s nothing. But for California, it would take care of the whole state.”<\/p>\n

The same day, Trump wrote on social media,<\/a> “I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA! He is the blame for this.”<\/p>\n

Trump’s claims were obviously false<\/a>. His entire understanding of hydrology and geography was wrong. There was plenty of water in the reservoirs, that wasn’t the problem. Water pressure was the primary issue, rather than a lack of supply, according to fire officials and water experts who spoke to CNBC.<\/a><\/p>\n

When Trump made those baseless claims, he was the president-elect. But now, as the president, he has the ability to act on them. On Friday, Trump ordered the Army Corps of Engineers <\/a>to open up dams on two lakes in California’s Central Valley, the agriculture powerhouse of the state, roughly 150 miles away from Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

After Trump’s orders, according to The Los Angeles Times,<\/a> “Federal records show that more than 2 billion gallons were released from the reservoirs over three days.”<\/p>\n

Trump soon took to social media to boast about this order,<\/a> “Photo of beautiful water flow that I just opened in California … Everybody should be happy about this long fought Victory! I only wish they listened to me six years ago — There would have been no fire!”<\/p>\n

When I first saw that Trump ordered the release of this water, I will admit I thought to myself, there must be some connection to the Los Angeles fires I’m missing. Even if the lakes were more than 150 miles away, there has to be some reason behind this. But no.<\/p>\n

According to one climate and hydrology expert, <\/a>“There is absolutely no connection between this water and the water needed for firefighting in L.A. There’s no physical connection. There’s no way to move the water from where it is to the Los Angeles Basin.”<\/p>\n

This is like pouring a glass of water down your sink in order to water your houseplants. In the end, all Trump did was waste billions of gallons of water<\/a> meant for farmers to use during the growing season.<\/p>\n

Allison Detzel contributed.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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<\/source><\/picture><\/div>\n

Chris Hayes<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Chris Hayes hosts “All In with Chris Hayes”<\/a>at 8 p.m. ET Monday through Friday on BLN. He is the editor-at-large at The Nation. A former fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Hayes was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is”A Colony in a Nation” (W. W. Norton).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is an adapted excerpt from the Feb. 4 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.” During the devastating wildfires last month in Los Angeles, Donald Trump repeatedly insisted that officials in California, including the state’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, were somehow hoarding water instead of using it to fight the raging fires. Water pressure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5824,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}