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Newsom calls water shortage ‘pure fiction’ as Trump says he warned him

January 9, 2025 | | Print Article

A war of words has broken out between President-elect Donald Trump and California Gov. Gavin Newsom over the wildfires in California.

The war erupted Wednesday after Trump published a post to Truth Social partly blaming the deadly California wildfires on Newsom’s refusal to sign what he termed the “water restoration declaration.”

“Governor Gavin Newscum 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,” he wrote.

“He 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. 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. A true disaster!” he added.

According to the New York Post, he’s long been an advocate of “diverting supply from California’s main water hub, the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, to farmers who have struggled with repeated droughts.”

But this plan has faced resistance from Newsom-aligned environmental groups which have claimed diverting the water would hurt the “delta smelt” fish that live in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

Trump did manage to enact the plan through a federal memorandum in 2020, but Newsom then challenged the plan in court and won.

Responding to Trump’s latest post, Newsom’s office, for its part, denied the existence of a “water restoration declaration.”

“There is no such document as the water restoration declaration – that is pure fiction,” the governor’s director of communications told Fox News. “The Governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need.”

The war of words progressed further later Wednesday when Trump told reporters that the California governor is not doing “a good job” and once again chastised him for obsessing over the “delta smelt.”

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“It’s very sad because I’ve been trying to get Gavin Newsom to allow water to come,” he said. “You’d have tremendous water up there, [but] they send it out from the Pacific because they’re trying to protect a tiny little fish. For the sake of a smelt, they have no water… It’s a mistake of the governor, and you could say, the administration.”

This time Newsom’s office replied by claiming “There is no water shortage in Southern California right now.” The office also published several quotes from California officials backing their statement.

“In terms of water reliability and water supply at this moment in Southern California, things are looking pretty solid,” one quote from Mike McNutt of the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District reads.

However, the evidence strongly suggests otherwise.

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Trump has been warning Newsom about the potential for deadly wildfires since 2019. That year, as the Kincade Fire erupted in Sonoma County, Trump published a post to Truth Social taking Newsom to task for his poor “forest management.”

“The Governor of California, @GavinNewsom, has done a terrible job of forest management,” he wrote. “I told him from the first day we met that he must ‘clean’ his forest floors regardless of what his bosses, the environmentalists, DEMAND of him. Must also do burns and cut fire stoppers.”

“Every year, as the fire’s rage & California burns, it is the same thing-and then he comes to the Federal Government for $$$ help. No more. Get your act together Governor. You don’t see close to the level of burn in other states,” he added.

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Vivek Saxena
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