Trump’s Truth Social response to the deadly wildfires in California got almost nothing right

When I was a child, my grandfather used to take me horseback riding in the chaparral around Los Angeles. It was dry and dusty – a landscape out of one of those Western movies nearby, with a kind of austere beauty that grows on you.

As wildfires rage through the area, I think back on those trips, worry about the LA residents facing the destruction of their communities, and wonder how we can respond to the increasing risk of these natural disasters as climate change worsens.

You know what I don’t think about? Fish.

President-elect Donald Trump is, however, so I have to stop the serious thoughts for a bit and explain why a small endangered fish that lives hundreds of miles away from Los Angeles has nothing to do with any of this.

IN a Truth Social post On Wednesday, Trump blamed California Gov. Gavin Newsom for the wildfires, arguing that his handling of a complex dispute over water rights in the greater San Francisco area somehow either caused the fires or made it harder to fight them. It’s only a 123 word post, but I count two false statements, two misleading and one that is either a deep misunderstanding of his own argument or just garbled phrasing.

Newsom, Trump wrote, “refused to sign the water restoration declaration presented to him” (false) that would have allowed millions of gallons of water to flow into “many parts of California” (false) because he “wanted to protect a the essentially worthless fish called a smelt” (misleading) by “giving it less water” (pretty sure he means “more water”, but let’s move on) and now there is “no water for hydrants” (misleading).

I called Jeffrey Mount, a water policy expert at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, and read him the entire post.

“He has nothing right,” replied Mount.

Without going into too much detail, here’s what happened, as Mount and other California water experts explained to me. During Trump’s first term, his administration tried to divert some of the water entering a river delta near San Francisco to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley, among others. They came up with a plan for the water, like Newsom contested in court. The Biden administration later negotiated a new plan with California on how to divide the water.

This is basic stuff, so the fact that Trump is describing this as Newsom refusing to sign some kind of document that never existed should give you a sense of how disengaged he is with his own politics.

As for the scent, Trump is disingenuous. The problem is, there’s only so much water to go around in California, and even less when you consider its regular droughts. The water entering the river delta is fresh water, but where it meets the sea it becomes salty. Newsom, environmentalists and the commercial fishing industry in general have pushed for more freshwater to come downstream, not just to protect the smelt but also to help more valuable fish, such as salmon and steelhead, that spawn there.

But that is not the only problem. When the river starts to run dry, either from a drought or from people pulling too much water out of it, the saltwater starts to creep further upstream, Mount explained. As it does, it harms the local plants and wildlife. And if it gets too far upstream, it will eventually destroy the fresh water that is piped to farmers, nearby towns and other users.

As Mount put it, even if you don’t care about the fish, you still have to let some fresh water go downstream or nobody gets anything.

So what about Trump’s implication that the renegotiated deal somehow caused the fires or made them harder to fight? Remember, Trump wanted more of that water to go to nut and fruit farmers in areas most of whom support him, and not to the residents of Los Angeles, most of whom do not. His feud with Newsom isn’t about the area on fire at all.

Regardless, this wildfire was caused by a combination of drought, extremely high winds and long-ago decisions by planners and developers about how far into the hills to build — not the county’s water supply. That’s right some hydrants ran dry when the Palisades fire burned, but that’s because the county has underinvested in firefighting infrastructure in the area. In short, they had enough water for hydrants, just not enough tanks to hold it.

In the coming days, there will be much discussion about how to respond to these wildfires. Where should Los Angeles allow housing to be built? How should insurance companies deal with the risk of these homes? What more does the county and state need to do to prepare to fight them? How can we all find ways to reduce the climate-changing greenhouse gases that make these disasters stronger and more frequent? These are serious questions and serious people will discuss them.

Unfortunately, that debate will not include Trump, whose first instinct was to blame his political opponents, raise an irrelevant issue, and misinform everyone about the basic facts. And that is a tragedy in itself.